Fourteen seconds later, the helicopters crossed the Chicago River.
Qween settled back in and stared for a while at the seemingly endless stretch of water. She finished her bottle and struggled to her feet. She replaced the cap and stowed the empty bottle safely under her poncho. A lot of people would have been tempted to just toss the bottle in the lake, and while she had to admit the idea held a certain appeal, she knew better. She might be homeless, but that was no excuse to disrespect the environment.
She crawled over the concrete slabs until she reached the grass of the golf course. She paused a moment, catching her breath. The lights of downtown looked the same as always, but she knew better. Something in her city was cracking; some sort of cancer was seething under the surface, something that threatened her home.
She rolled the kinks out of her shoulders, scratched an itch under the Viking helmet, and headed south, moving parallel to the bike path, following the helicopters.
CHAPTER 33
11:56 PM
August 12
Deep in the tunnel, Lee leaned against the hood of his Mercedes and hit the button to make his watch glow. Fuck. Kimmy was going to give him hell later, guaranfuckingteed. He was supposed to take her out to some restaurant with an unintelligible name that all the papers had been raving about. Didn’t look like that was going to happen anytime soon this evening. And he couldn’t call her, because there was no reception in the tunnel.
She was such exquisite eye candy that he’d taken to pulling her in close when the cameras were around, even the stupid kid, but he still didn’t know if he was going to keep her around for the long term or not. She had a body that wouldn’t quit, and had even started wearing the handcuffs that he liked in bed, but goddamn, she could be one hell of a cunt sometimes.
As soon as he left the hospital, he’d called his uncle. Phil audibly winced when Lee told him the detective’s names.
“Look, those guys are fuckers,” Phil had said. “Two pissed-off drunks. They’ve been with the department enough years that they’ve got some clout. You go up against them, it’s expensive. You’ll win, sure. But it costs. You want my opinion? It’s not worth it. These guys, they’ve been known to hold grudges for years. I’m telling you, treat ’em like a hooker with herpes. Steer well clear.”
“Understood.”
“So. No loose ends then? Nothing that can connect you with this trouble?”
“Hell, no.”
“Are you positive? Think carefully before you answer.”
“I don’t see how.”
“So there are loose ends.”
“No. Dammit, no.”
“You sure?”
“Shit.” Lee rubbed his face. “Fine. I’ll take care of it.”
“You better.” Phil hung up.
Lee called a guy he knew out in Elgin, named Robert Earl Bailey, a guy with certain skills. Robert Earl didn’t have much of a chin, just a gentle bump from his mouth on down to his Adam’s apple. His eyes didn’t play well together, they kept threatening to find separate things interesting. Despite looking like he was a step away from assisted living, he’d worked at a Wal-Mart, a Best Buy, a fireworks factory, a gun store, a gun range, and a law enforcement and surveillance supply warehouse. He was a licensed transporter of dangerous materials, and had driven for Lee several times before.
He also knew more about the cleansing effects of fire than anyone else Lee knew. Lee had used these skills to collect insurance on a house he had been renting out in the suburbs. Robert Earl, who preferred people use his full first and middle names, had started replacing the floor and left a mixture of solvents and oily rags in the corner overnight and left the concoction to ferment and do all the work. The house had been empty, and no one had noticed until it was too late. The fire had gutted the house before the fire department had even been called.
However, these heavy rock walls were going to require a bit more than tamping the lid down on a paint can and walking away.
The bodyguard had left the headlights on, illuminating Robert Earl Bailey. He was about twenty yards down the tunnel, assembling all his shit where the tunnel opened up into the vast space filled with garbage and hazardous waste. He had been kneeling in the same spot for damn near half an hour, preparing the explosives. Robert Earl might be an expert in all kinds of useful shit, but he was fucking slow.
Back at his house earlier, Robert Earl had brought his supplies out to the car from his basement, and the bodyguard had balked at putting all that shit in the trunk.
“What happens, we hit a pothole?” the bodyguard, Bryan, had demanded. Bryan didn’t like Robert Earl, probably because the bodyguard was black, and Robert Earl had a giant Confederate flag hanging in his living room.
Robert Earl had snorted. “It’s harmless. Watch.” He’d dropped the heavy duffel bag on his driveway. Lee and Bryan had flinched. Robert Earl had giggled like a toddler who had just inhaled half a gallon of birthday ice cream. “See? Harmless. Until you send an electric current through it. Then it goes bang.”
Now, an hour later, down in the tunnel, Bryan kept pacing, saying, “We shouldn’t be here tonight. It’s not smart, you being this close.”
Lee waved that away. “Sometimes, you gotta make sure something is done right. That means being hands-on.”
Bryan exhaled in a hiss. “Boss, I’ve been with you on some crazy shit, and most of it turned out okay. Some things, though, you and I both know, they sometimes turned out not to be good ideas. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all that, and I gotta say, this does not look like a good idea. Just walk away. Nothing down here tied to us.”
“They start poking around down here it won’t take a fucking genius to start looking around at waste disposal companies. And believe me, they’d start at the top. With me. This way”—meaning sealing off the tunnel—“they got nothing.”
“You telling me you can blow up a tunnel this size under the city of Chicago and nobody’s gonna notice?”
“We’re not gonna blow it up. Robert Earl’s just gonna make the roof cave in. Just seal it off. He says all they’ll see is a blip, if they notice it at all. Just a burp.”
Robert Earl came jogging back to the car, fiddling with the remote detonator. He put it on the hood between them and said, “Don’t touch this,” giving Bryan a meaningful look. He retrieved a box of drill bits and scuffled back where he had laid out the assembled explosives.
He hit the trigger on the De Walt twice, tightening the drill’s grip on the bit. The high whine filled the tunnel and echoed back into the darkness beyond the reach of the headlights. He rolled a pair of orange foam ear plugs between his thumb and forefinger and screwed them into his ears.
Lee and Bryan glanced at each other, then stuck their fingers in their ears.
Robert Earl braced himself against the wall and wedged the bit into a seam he’d chipped out earlier. He flexed his grip on the DeWalt, squeezed the trigger, and leaned into it, putting some weight behind the spinning bit.
This time, the drill’s engine was engulfed in the sound of the grinding howl of the bit chewing into the rock wall.
Shards of something reflective flickered in the darkness beyond Robert Earl. Lee pushed off the car and took several steps forward. He turned back to Bryan and yelled over the sound of the drill, “Did you see that?”
Bryan squinted, put his hand over his eyes. “What?”
“I don’t know. . . .” Lee moved back and stood in front of the right headlight. His voice trailed off. Then, in the darkness of his shadow, he saw them. Hundreds of red eyes, glinting at Robert Earl. He pointed.