“I remember Liberia. That Taylor guy, right?”
Her eyebrows went up a fraction, her face loosened a little. Lynch guessed he’d scored some points, not being a complete dumbass.
“Charles Taylor, yes. An amoral thug. He overthrew the government, headed up a group called the RUF. When you meet our guests, you’ll notice that many are missing at least one arm. Lopping of limbs is an RUF trademark. Many of our guests were also forced to work in the diamond mines. The famous conflict diamonds – blood diamonds. It’s how the Taylors of the region pay for their wars. The men are forced to work in the mines essentially as slaves. If they are caught trying to keep a diamond, they lose a hand, if they aren’t killed.”
Lynch nodded. “You mentioned tribal violence. These guys here all get along?”
“We don’t allow trouble of that sort here.”
“You’ve got all these guys, different tribes, suddenly they get over here and make nice?”
“We don’t allow trouble, Detective. And none of our guests have guns.”
“Did you see or hear anything unusual last night?”
“No.”
“Anything strange about Saturday’s behavior?” Lynch asked. “He seem agitated, frightened?”
“All our residents are frightened. They’ve been abused by armed men in power their entire lives. They’ve seen family members killed, their wives and daughters raped. They have suffered these horrible mutilations. And most have never been more than a few miles from their homes before. They come here, they’re in a completely foreign environment. We work to help them acclimate, but a newcomer like Membe, he’s always frightened, always agitated. Anyway, I went through all of this with another detective last night. Do I really need to cover all this ground again?”
“Did you hear about the shooting at the United Center last night?”
“Of course. A rich businessman is murdered and it leads the news. I couldn’t find any coverage of Membe’s murder at all.”
“There is some evidence that indicates that Saturday and the victim at the United Center were killed with the same weapon,” Lynch said. “I think the killer may have parked on the street near here – maybe Saturday just saw the wrong guy at the wrong time. Was there anyone parked out front last night?”
“On any night they have an event at the stadium someone is always parked out front.”
“Any cars that seemed out of place?”
“Not to me. But I don’t know much about cars. Not aside from what I needed to know to keep the thirty year-old Land Cruiser we had in Kenema running.”
“Anything special about Saturday?” said Lynch. “Anything that might have followed him over from Africa?”
“I’m not familiar with the details of his life there, Detective, beyond what he has shared with me in the past few weeks. He saw his family murdered, which would be unusual here, but it’s commonplace where Saturday was from. He was accused of stealing a diamond, so his hand was cut off. Also commonplace, I’m afraid.”
“You must have some records, though. I mean for the political asylum, there has to be an application, paperwork?”
“We don’t have those here. There is an attorney downtown who helps us with that. Doug Telling. He’d be able to get you any paperwork from that process.”
Lynch buttoned his coat to hide his gun, and then talked with the residents. The huge man Lynch had seen on his way in followed the whole time, always hanging back by the wall, the same frightened, hateful look in his eyes. Only one of the men spoke English, a guy who was sitting on the stairs, the only one that seemed comfortable; had a smart-ass air to him.
“Did you know Membe Saturday?” Lynch asked.
The guy shrugged, smirked. “No more Saturdays for him. Kissi pussy, shoulda stayed home, made baskets.”
The huge man came off the wall shouting, lunged toward them; the man on the stairs shouting back, some African dialect. Magnus jumped in front of the big man, her head barely coming up to his chest, put both her hands up, pushed him back, lit in to him in, Lynch assumed, whatever language he had been speaking. The man looked down, ashamed, turned back to the wall.
She turned, snapped at the man on the stairs.
“Go to your room, Isaac.”
“You gotta show off for your police boyfriend, eh?” the man said.
She just stared him down. Slowly, he got up, went upstairs.
“Thought you said you didn’t have that kind of trouble here,” Lynch said.
“That wasn’t tribal,” she said. “Isaac is an asshole. Besides, I said I don’t allow it. I don’t.”
“You have to jump in like that a lot?”
“It happens.”
“Good way to get hurt,” Lynch said.
She held his eyes a second, hard. “It happens.”
Lynch just nodded. They went through the building, talked to the rest of the residents, Magnus translating. Nothing. One resident with jaundiced eyes and a skeletal face kept following Lynch around with a strange smile, making a gun with his fingers and shooting it at Lynch over and over again.
CHAPTER 7
Bobby Lee watched the blonde walk into the lobby of the Deloitte building at Wacker and Monroe through his hack into the Chicago emergency command center. He’d built a facial recognition match into his software after he’d targeted her at the Route 59 Burlington station a couple days back. She looked like that blonde chick Tiger Woods used to be married to, and that was some hot poontang. He’d heard people saying how they didn’t understand how Tiger could step out on that, but Bobby Lee understood. It was the power of strange. World was full of nookie, man. And the nookie you got, that shit don’t never take your mind off the rest of it.
Bobby had been part of the team that helped set up the Chicago video surveillance system – one of the most sophisticated in the world. Thousands of cameras – on light poles, on buses, private security cameras networked in. It was on the news now and then, but he figured most Chicagoans just didn’t get it, didn’t understand that a lot of them were on camera every time they stepped outside. Or inside, for that matter, if they were anyplace public. Bobby understood it – hell, that’s why he’d moved out to Naperville. That Big Brother eyes-in-the-sky shit gave him the willies.
But Bobby knew an opportunity when he saw one, and he just might be the best freaking systems guy in the world. The Chicago surveillance gig had been his last as a wage slave. He’d built a shitload of back doors into the code, and those gave him run of the system. That’s when he’d gone private. He’d figured there’d be people who’d pay top dollar for access. He’d figured right. And then the City had come calling. Bobby’s dad had been a black GI in the waning days of ’Nam. His mom had been a Saigon mattress girl with enough sense to understand that the only good thing likely to come out of the war was a ticket to the States. So Bobby had come squalling into the world in the VA hospital in Chicago, and he’d grown up to understand the racial algebra in the City. Fuck that “Cablinasian” shit Tiger got away with. You got any black in you, then you’re black. And that means you’re a minority. And that means minority contracts. So when the Chicago PD needed vendors for maintenance and upgrades for their ever-growing video system, Bobby tossed his hat in the ring. With his experience in the system already, he came out with the big prize. Money was decent, workload was minimal, and it kept him wired in to the max. It also meant he could cover his tracks. After a big job, the type that might get people thinking, he’d close up whatever wormhole he hacked in through, bury his tracks under a pile of code, and set up a shiny new way in somewhere else.
Damn, this blonde was hot. He checked his database – couldn’t remember whether he’d hacked anything at Deloitte yet. Yep. Took a bit, but he found the file for employee IDs, ran his JPEG of the blonde against the images they had for their security cards, and up she popped. Courtney Schilst, senior in the tax practice. Fifteen minutes after she’d walked in the door he had her name, salary, cell number, her IP address and where she lived – an apartment just east of 59, a shade north of Fox Valley. Ten minutes after that, he was into her Facebook and Twitter feeds, scrolling through, looking for a hook. Courtney didn’t know it yet, but inside a week, two at the outside, she’d be another notch on Bobby’s belt. Boy had to have a hobby, right?