Phil said, “Tell me you’re on the way down.”
Lee snapped the phone shut. Phil had left it for him. It was a cheap piece of shit, unable to connect to the Internet or any other bells and whistles, but his old one wasn’t working right ever since he threw it at the TV. He didn’t even want to think about the fucking plasma, let alone look at it. It didn’t matter. All of this shit was temporary.
He walked into the living room, struggling with his tie. Kimmy and Grace were on the couch, faces plastered to the windows, watching the endless procession of dozens and dozens of CTA buses, all streaming through Grant Park before heading south on Lake Shore Drive. Good. Let ’em stare at the spectacle, he thought. It would keep them out of his hair for a while.
“Gotta go, babe. They need me.”
Kimmy turned, confusion and worry crinkling her forehead. “Okay, but aren’t we supposed to evacuate too? That’s what the news said.”
“You gonna listen to the news or you gonna listen to me? Who the hell you think has the inside scoop? Huh? No, you two stay here. You’re absolutely, one hundred percent safe. Believe me, it’s already over. I’ll be back quick as I can, soon as I get this business done. Then later on tonight, we’ll all go back down to the press conference. So lay out your best outfit and be ready for a night on the town.”
“It’s all going to be okay? The city, all the sick people, I mean? They’re gonna get all those bugs, right?”
“Of course.” He gave her his best smile. “They’re just being careful. And as it happens, it’s gonna be the best thing that ever happened for us. I’ll make a big deal out of how I’m volunteering to stay behind to protect my city. Phil says the media is gonna eat it up. Says it could be the defining moment of my career. You’ll be at my side later when I give that press conference telling people that the city has been saved. You watch. I’m gonna be a hero. Trust me.”
“Okay, baby. Can we bring Grace?”
“Yeah, I wanna come,” Grace said, finally tearing her eyes away from all the buses when she heard her name.
Lee kept his grin alive. “We’ll have to see, kiddo.” He grabbed his briefcase. It was empty except for a Maxim magazine, but Phil told him he looked more professional carrying it around. He checked his watch. “I’m sorry, but I gotta run. Phil and Bryan are downstairs.”
Kimmy came off the couch and stood in the sunlight, hands clasped at her chest. “Love you.”
It was impossible to ignore the pleading, questioning tone in her voice. Lee struggled to keep his smile wide. “Yeah, see you later,” he said and left.
As he walked down the hall to the elevator, he reconsidered his initial anger and outright revulsion at being around the brat at home, let alone in public. The more he thought about it, the more he came to understand that she might not be such a bad prop for the press conference. Might be the best visual confirmation that the city was safe, hoisting a four-year-old girl to his shoulders. Yeah. That would make a hell of a shot.
He made a final adjustment to his tie in the reflective metal of the elevator. Funny how things turned out. Less than twelve hours ago he had been on his way to becoming one of the most reviled politicians in the city’s history. And for Chicago, that was really saying something. The way Phil barked, he’d be lucky if he avoided jail time. But that was then, as they said, and now things had definitely swung back in his favor. He wondered what the hell that freak Dr. Reischtal wanted. He strode out into the lobby and saluted the doorman.
The doorman, some simpering idiot who couldn’t find a real job, held up his hand. “So sorry, Mr. Shea, but I’m trying to get a tally of who is left in the building. Most of the residents have already left, of course, but I’ve been told that I need to give the soldiers a count of who is left on the premises.”
“You can scratch my place off your list, then,” Lee said. “It’s empty.”
“Oh, so Kimmy and Grace are gone, then? I must have missed them.”
Lee was irritated that this piss-boy knew Kimmy’s name. “I sent ’em to her mother’s last night. Like I said, it’s all clear up there.” Lee didn’t wait for a response, and strolled through the spinning doors, down the steps to where Bryan and Phil waited in the car.
CHAPTER 57
10:44 AM
August 14
Farther down Clark, where it passed under the El tracks that covered Van Buren, a slim slab of beige granite sat all by itself in the midst of a perfectly average city plaza, filled with plenty of benches, a few ornamental trees, some shrubs and flowers in long cement planters. Lots of people who worked in the Loop liked to sit in the sun and eat their lunch before returning to the skyscrapers. If you weren’t paying attention, you’d never know it was a maximum-security federal prison.
The windows gave it away. They were narrow slits and resembled ports for medieval archers to fire arrows, too small for anyone to squeeze through. A small, nondescript sign identified the building as the Metropolitan Correction Center.
Ed and Sam rolled into the secure parking lot next door. The guard at the entrance wasted time by having them wait in their car while he called his superior officer upstairs. He got the all-clear, but still demanded to know what he should do if he saw a rat—“or one of them bedbugs.”
Sam said, “You got a sidearm. Use it.”
Ed parked in a handicapped spot on the second level next to the walkway into the prison reserved for cops and prison personnel. The convicts were brought in through a different entrance, up on the sixth level, at the top of the parking structure.
The warden himself was waiting. “This, this is most unusual, officers.” The warden was in his sixties, with a head full of brilliant white hair and soft hands. He wanted to stop and talk in the corridor, but Sam and Ed blew past him, heading for the elevators. He hurried to catch up.
Ed said, “Call the Cook County sheriff and demand at least ten prisoner transfer buses, more if you can get ’em.”
“I talked to an Arturo Mendoza. He never did give me an adequate explanation.”
“Call the sheriff. Get as many buses as you can. Then turn on the goddamn TV.”
“I have received a call from the sheriff’s department. They have promised us their full cooperation.”
“What does that mean? How many buses, have they promised, specifically?”
“Three.”
“We need more.”
“It is my understanding that we are simply transporting the inmates to the holding cells at the Cook County facilities at Twenty-sixth and California. It may require two trips, three at the most. Three buses will be adequate.”
Ed stopped and put a hand on the warden’s shoulder. Ed said gently, “I’m not telling you how to do your job, but we’re gonna need more buses.” Sam recognized the good-cop, wise-older-brother tone. “Sure, we could pack everybody in here on a couple of buses, haul ’em down there and dump ’em, but there’s a lot of variables in this situation. We haven’t been able to talk to anybody down there yet, and so we’re not taking anything for granted. What happens if we get down there and find out that there’s no room? What then? You gonna leave eighty inmates locked on one bus with nowhere to go?”
The warden licked his lips and finally nodded. “I’ll call them back, see what I can arrange.”
He showed them into a briefing room, filled with guards. Most of the guards were watching the press conferences on TV. The cameras had just cut from the president outside the White House to the mayor at City Hall, who began to outline the details of the evacuation. The warden introduced Ed and Sam and explained to his men, “As many of you are aware, recent developments in the Loop have necessitated the evacuation of Chicago’s entire downtown area. CPD has seen fit to send us Detectives Jones and Johnson to oversee the transfer of every prisoner inside the MCC.”