“What do you expect to learn from me?” I asked desperately, stumbling beside him. “At least tell me that.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. Mothers and daughters yap about everything.”
“Are you going to kill me?” I purposely stopped at a store window and faked interest in a thousand-dollar Louis Vuitton purse, spotlighted on a pedestal like a rare da Vinci sculpture.
“Shut up!” This time, it came out in a hiss, and a woman passing us shot Louie a dirty look. To me, the abused girlfriend, she offered a sympathetic one.
“You don’t have to take it,” she said. “There are places that will help you.”
“Mind your own business, lady.” He tightened his grip on my arm, dragging me away. “Come on, we’re crossing here.”
Actually, I had looked forward to coming “here,” to Millennium Park, Chicago’s most divine public place, replete with a stunning open-air band shell that looked like a spaceship had landed. I wished my first view of the Bean sculpture wasn’t under such duress, but, still, it awed me: 110 tons of shiny stainless steel in the shape of a giant kidney bean. Blue sky, floating clouds, the city skyline, tiny figures of gawkers-all of it reflected back at me in the beautiful distortion.
But the most beautiful thing of all? Staring into the Bean, I swore I glimpsed a tiny pink tracksuit standing out in the crowd of about fifty people behind us. I didn’t know whether pink tracksuits were as popular in Chicago as bright red American Girl bags, but, ludicrously, preposterously, hope surged.
“Stop fuckin’ turnin’ around,” Louie said, glancing behind him. “Move it. Under here.” We stood with about twenty other people under the bottom curve of the Bean, gazing up at our reflections. I looked very far away. And skinny. Like a sad potato stick.
“Do you see how easy this was?” Louie asked me softly. “In the daytime. Out in the open. Imagine me coming at you in the dark.” His arm held me close. “I’m going to let you go this time. But give your mother a message. If she doesn’t keep her mouth shut, if you don’t stop your digging, your little Maddie won’t be doing her cheerleader jumps anymore.”
He was going to let me go?
Inspired, I twisted his crotch as hard as I could, and my other hand reached for his gun. But his T-shirt, soaked with sweat, stuck to his ribs and I only succeeded in pushing the gun farther into his jeans.
I hadn’t dug so awkwardly down a guy’s pants since the senior prom, and I nearly knocked over an elderly woman as I wrestled Louie to the ground.
“Jesus! There are children here,” said a father, who clearly thought our fantasy perversion was a hand-job in the reflection of the Bean. He tugged his two small daughters away in disgust.
Louie yanked my hair back, knocked my face into the concrete, and for an instant I saw my frantic expression contorted back at me like a funhouse mirror.
And then pink. Oh blessed pink.
CHAPTER 20
I woke up in the back of a car with my head faceup in the lap of Hudson Byrd.
“Get Louie’s cell phone,” I croaked, struggling. “Arrest the last person he called. He’s stalking Maddie at Skatepark.”
One of Hudson’s best qualities was that he didn’t ask a lot of unnecessary questions. He jumped out the door just as Pink Lady slid in the other side, gone so fast I wondered whether I had conjured him up.
“Good, you’re conscious,” she said. I closed my eyes to avoid the psychedelic effect of her pink outfit and my bad decision to sit upright. My head was spinning like a helicopter on its way down.
“The ambulance is almost here.” She patted my shoulder. “Bless your heart. Don’t worry, we got him. He’s in the car behind us, about to take a trip to headquarters.”
“Maddie…” My throat felt like I’d swallowed sand. “My niece. One of his guys is following my niece-”
To her credit, Martha disappeared just as quickly as Hudson, whipping out a walkie-talkie and barking into it as she ran out of my view. Apparently, she wasn’t just a nice mommy with a taste for Russian classics. I could see the shiny Bean in the distance like a huge bubble that had miraculously landed without popping, tourists cluttered around as if this were a perfectly ordinary day.
The seventh-floor Cubs fan popped his head in the window and grinned.
“How ya doin’, kid? Any decent Cubs fan would have stopped to argue that we have no pitching. Agent Waring is going to ask you a few questions if you’re up to it after this nice young lady here checks out your vitals.”
Agent Waring. The FBI.
I nodded, wishing everyone would go away. Find Maddie.
An EMT with a first-aid kit and a blood-pressure cuff appeared. A large black woman with gentle hands. She checked my pupils with a tiny flashlight and asked me a series of questions for a test that I evidently passed. As she worked, the world stopped dancing around. She responded to my half-hysterical request for antibacterial wipes so I could kill any cooties on my hands that had been living down Louie’s pants. Only this and Maddie seemed important.
“Your blood pressure’s not bad, considering,” she informed me. “And your wounds are fairly superficial. The bump is on your cheek, not your forehead. Your eyes look good. I’m thinking you might have passed out from shock.” She pulled out a kit and went to work on my cheek. “As long as you’ve got someone watching you for the next twenty-four hours, I’d just as soon let you go. The Chicago emergency room on a hot summer day-it’s nothin’ you want to experience if you don’t have to.”
She smoothed on a Band-Aid with cool fingers and got out of the car, closing the door and poking her head back in the open window.
“Any dizzy spells or a sharp headache, you come on in. Somebody should check your eyes every now and then for twenty-four hours to make sure they aren’t dilated. Don’t get up. Wait here.”
“Thanks,” I said tonelessly.
I sat perfectly still, imploring God.
Save Maddie, save Maddie, save Maddie.
In ten minutes, God answered. A breathless Martha Waring plopped beside me.
“Your niece is OK. Your friend Hudson knows the owner of the Skatepark where she was hanging out. Buford somebody. Buford found a guy in the parking lot and, frankly, I’m not sure I want to know how things went down from there.”
I closed my eyes and pictured Buford Bell. Balding. A potbelly. A former champion skeet shooter and one-time Olympic alternate who still displayed his dusty trophies in the Skatepark lobby five miles outside of Ponder.
“Buford got the guy to admit he was hired anonymously through Facebook to give a scouting report on your niece over the phone. No plans to kidnap. Buford is holding him for the police, who should be there any second.”
Maddie was safe. Hudson was real.
She stared at me directly. “Did you know your attacker?”
“I never saw him before. He said his name was Louie.”
“That’s right. Louis Cantini. That name doesn’t ring any bells?”
I shook my head.
“I think you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said soothingly, even though we both knew that wasn’t true.
Should I disavow her of that wishful thinking?
“Why were you following me?” I wanted to know.
“I got assigned to tail you after you visited Rosalina Marchetti.” She hesitated, clearly deciding how much else to say. “She’s part of an ongoing investigation.
“When Louie Cantini showed up at the library, I figured, not a coincidence, so I called in some backup. The Cantinis and the Marchettis have an antagonistic history. Plus, Louie is probably lucky if he can read a soup can, much less a book. I apologize for not getting to you sooner. Louie jammed the lock behind him.”