Campanelli: Sentinel (27 page)

              Tam’s only waitress, a teenager by the name of Maris, screamed and moved toward the telephone.

              The man with Tamara in his grip removed one hand and pointed a threatening finger at the young girl. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” he warned and shot her a look of fury that she would never forget.

              Maris froze and put her hands in the air as if the thug’s finger were a gun.

              “All right!” the other shouted once he rose from the prone man’s chest. “Everybody out!”

              The half dozen other customers at tables or booths were slow to react to the man’s order. That was until the big man yanked Tamara over her counter and, with a large right fist pummeled her into immediate unconsciousness. The violent act drove the people to their feet.

              “What the hell is goin’ on out here?!” Donny, the cook yelled through his rectangular cut in the wall. “You let her go!!” he boomed once he saw the limp body of his boss be pulled uncaringly over the counter. He reacted by grabbing the largest knife he could find, but was frozen in place by what he saw in the younger thug’s hand. It was not the pistol in his right, but something he had retrieved from within his dirty and faded blue jacket.

              It was a grenade and the pin was dangling from his teeth. At the sight of it, the patrons of
Tam’s Place
fled, forced to run toward the violent pair to get out.

              “What the hell you doin’?” the captor demanded of his young partner as he slung Tamara Billingsley over one hefty shoulder.

              “Gettin’ everyone out, Andy,” the young one explained as his eyes locked onto the knife in the cook’s hand. Maris bumped into him on her way past, but his concentration remained unbroken. As if the man were constructed of fire, the young girl screamed and whirled away, shaking her hands in mindless fright and disgust. She followed the last of the brunch crowd outside.

              “Where the hell did you get that?” Andy asked as he took a few steps toward the front door with their prize.

              The young one turned to brag proudly about how he had obtained the incendiary grenade, but before he could speak, something struck him hard in the chest, startling him into taking a step backward. Looking down, he saw the great knife that had just been in the hands of the cook sticking out from in between the open folds of his jacket.

              “Mark!” Andy howled, pulled his own handgun from his belt and brought it up to return the cook’s favor.

              Mark was suddenly weak and cold. He stared into the surprised face of the cook that had just murdered him, but could not seem to lift the heavy handgun. Instead, it dropped onto the floor and, as Donny fell out of sight to evade Andy’s gunfire, Mark drew his last breath. Before he fell onto the unconscious customer he had pistol-whipped, Mark’s left arm flung the grenade toward the kitchen area. It fell short and bounced off the ceramic wall tile and tumbled to the floor behind the counter.

              “Shit!” Andy shrieked. He forgot about trying to kill the cook and sprinted to the glass doors. Tamara’s limp body bounced violently with every one of the big man’s strides. He blew through the doors and, as Andy left the sidewalk and made his first step into the street, a loud “
Whump
!” shook
Tam’s Place
, shattering every window in the ancient building.

              Without looking back, the lifelong criminal arrived to his beaten old vehicle and tore the driver’s door open. After tossing Tam inside clumsily, he jumped in and slammed the door. He dared a glance toward the building he had just left as he pressed the button to ignite the engine. Leaving a trail of oil and tire smoke, Andy caught a glimpse of the bright yellow fire that Mark left in his wake through the broken out window frames.

              As a dozen onlookers watched, Andy wheeled the creaky car around the corner and accelerated south along Michigan Avenue.

***

              “Frank!” Sebastian shouted over the speaker and the intermittent undulations of the audience. “Stay close to me. You too, Marcus,” he ordered and waved at the pair to follow.

              With a quick glance to his large partner, Frank fell into step with the OCD Chief, Mayor Victor Jameson and his security entourage, consisting of five men similar in stature to Williams.

              “…
and I am here to tell you, friends…that I am with you! The Lord is with you! And with your support, brothers and sisters…I would like to announce my candidacy for mayor of Chicago!
”

              The crowd noise reached a crescendo that immediately forced the bio-electronic implants of anyone in Daley Plaza to compensate. Surprised by the announcement, Frank looked to Marcus, laughed and shook his head. Williams merely smiled sardonically and went back to scanning the crowd.

              Mayor Jameson and his pocket of security men suddenly picked up the pace. The two black suited men in the lead took to the stage from the rear, hopping the steps in one bound. Jameson followed, coming into view of the reverend’s supporters. The plaza instantaneously erupted with rounds of booing and catcalls.

              Earl Sebastian and the rest of the official entourage blanketed the stage. Steve Enos seemed unsurprised by this development. He simply eyed the new arrivals to the spectacle and sauntered to the back of the stage.

              Outwardly nonplussed by the reaction of the angry mob, Mayor Victor Jameson waved and smiled as he jogged the last four paces to the podium, where he relieved the HV preacher of the microphone.

              “
Well, that’s very interesting, Mister DeSilva
,” Jameson annunciated the insult of bypassing the religious title, “
but I’m afraid that you won’t qualify to run next term
!”

              DeSilva smiled and crossed his arms. “Oh, really?” no one heard through the continued verbal assailments from the attendees.

              Campanelli, Williams and Sebastian inched their way toward the podium to join their mayor. Like the security detail that the mayor had brought with him, Williams’s eyes pierced the crowd for any signs of assault.

              From the slightly higher vantage point, Frank took in the sight of the crowd. They did not seem quite so intimidating when viewed from this new angle. He could make out the entire ring of riot police and, looking back the way he and the entourage had come, he saw many of the uniformed officers that had been milling about the entrance ramp had followed the detail, creating a ‘V’ shaped void. The people that they moved were unhappy about it, protesting loudly. One man threw something at one of the officers and was promptly taken down to be arrested.

             
Oh, shit
, Frank thought.
Here we go.

              “
It may interest everyone here to know
,” the mayor went on, pushing his voice to a near shout to be heard, “
that as much as this man has drilled into everyone’s head that your police department has not been effective against human trafficking, he has been, in reality, a key player in the criminal network responsible for it
!”

              The plaza erupted in hateful cries of disbelief. From the mayor’s right, a man in the crowd threw his “Jameson: Stop the Migration!” sign at the stage, forcing the bodyguard there to deflect it. Its post snapped upon impact with the guard’s forearm, but fell harmlessly away.

              DeSilva dropped his hands to his sides in feigned shock and turned to the audience, his chin dropped and eyes widened.

              “
We have evidence and the confessions of several individuals belonging to the Ignatola crime family, implicating this man
!” the mayor shrieked and pointed at the HV celebrity. “
He is the owner of several illegal aircraft that have been instrumental in the human trafficking
!”

              Frank could see that the riot control officers were beginning to encounter trouble with the people. Their light blue helmets and clear plastic shields bobbled vigorously, making streams of the reflected light of the sun.

              “
We will prove it, folks
!” the mayor went on. “
We are placing you, Maximilian DeSilva, under arrest
!” he yelled and dropped the microphone to the stage floor.

              Sebastian moved to DeSilva and grabbed his arm. Frank stepped quickly to assist, placing his hand to his belt to retrieve his handcuffs.

              The next thing Frank knew, he was knocked flat. The air had been emptied from his lungs by the blur that was Marcus Williams, who screamed, “GUN!”

              Gunshots from very close by spit into the air and echoed briefly from the surrounding buildings. The screams of the DeSilva faithful filled the plaza, diminishing any noise that they had made earlier.

              Flat on his back, Frank struggled to draw in breath. Bereft of oxygen, the occipital lobe of his brain had great difficulty in deciphering the signals sent to it by his lenses. His field of view narrowed, lost focus and darkened. His chest flared in pain both from the impact with his partner and the absence of air. As he slowly, mercifully dragged breath back inside his lungs, Campanelli brought his upper body onto his left elbow. The darkness retreated and he was able to make out the lonely podium. Beyond that, a disorganized mass of humanity scurried in every direction.

              Campanelli sat up and noted that the mayor and his five guards were gone. The void that had been created behind the stage was now contested ground, hard-fought by the riot police. In the distance beyond them, DeSilva and his bodyguard were getting into the limousine.

              “Marcus!” Frank tried to shout, but he could not hear it. The effort took much out of what he had regained in his lungs and he was certain that he had made no sound.

              He turned his attention to his left and found Chief Sebastian on his knees, bent over an object that Frank’s eyes could not describe. Blinking away tears that distorted his vision, Campanelli could see that the object was a person.

              Frank fought to regain his feet and he stumbled past the podium to find that the prone person was Marcus Williams. He was bleeding from high on his chest, near the collarbone. Sebastian was applying pressure with both hefty hands.

              The ground of the Daley Plaza immediately in front of the stage was empty now, save for a mass of policemen wrestling with a bald young man in a torn white DeSilva t-shirt. Beyond this group, the occasional attendee or police officer lay flat on the ground. Frank surmised that these people had been trampled by the fleeing mass.

              “Are you all right?” someone somewhere said.

              From further up Washington and Dearborn Streets, the people retreated. The shouts and screams continued.

              “Frank!” the voice repeated urgently.

              Captain Campanelli turned to see that it was Earl Sebastian speaking. At some point, Frank had dropped to his knees next to his partner.

              He nodded in reply to the question and leaned closer to Williams. The man was breathing and his eyes shifted about. Finding Frank’s face, they settled on him.

              “Somebody took a shot at the mayor?” Frank asked, immediately regretting the stupid question.

              Marcus’s eyes blinked and his head gave a tiny nod.

              “And you jumped in front of it,” Campanelli concluded.

              Williams nodded again.

              “Jackass,” Frank judged as he patted his partner’s head, sweeping the man’s brown hair back into place and failing. Marcus smiled thinly, seeming to agree. “Anyone we know?”

              Williams mouthed the word ‘no’.

              Sirens screamed and wailed from every direction, but one prevailed beyond the rest. It announced the arrival of an ambulance. The glass of the Daley Center reflected the flashes of red light emitted by the vehicle.

              In a moment, Campanelli was asked to move by an EMT.

              “Take care, partner,” Frank said as he stood and stepped back. “You’ll be okay,” he added weakly, unconvinced by his own words.

              Dazed, Campanelli watched the medical staff remove Williams’s ruined jacket and shirt without moving his body. Piece by piece, the bloodied cloth was discarded to the surface of the stage. The undamaged bulletproof vest followed, dropped to the wooden surface with a dull thump.

              “Where’s DeSilva?” Sebastian asked from his side.

              Frank turned to the man, and noted the arrival of many uniformed officers, including Deputy Chief Alonso. All of them appeared slightly disheveled, as if they had fought hard to reach the scene of the crime. He supposed they had, after all. Campanelli turned to see that the great white car had vanished.

              Without answering the question, Frank leapt from the stage and discarded his façade of ‘cool’, breaking into a westward run toward Clark Street. Accessing his car via implant, he hailed it.