Trigger City (12 page)

F
or Amy Zhang, morning came laden with regret.
She was reluctant to answer more questions—didn't even want to talk about the previous night except to say that she shouldn't have had any wine and had said too much. And I pressed her aggressively, which just made things worse.

I'd been outside four times since sunrise. No Malibu. No occupied cars nearby of any make or model. Amy and I now stood in her bright kitchen. At an impasse. I tried various angles but she still wouldn't talk about it. I grew frustrated and said something unpleasant. Now we stood bathed in morning sun, facing each other, saying nothing. I thought she might bolt from the room. She didn't. She approached me tentatively. Then leaned against me, her ear to my chest. Despite my frustration, I put my arms around her.

She said, “Thank you for last night. I needed to cry on someone. And God knows, I needed the sleep. But I find this hard to accept. Without the wine clouding my head…it just seems too absurd. I'm supposed to believe that you were working for Joan Richmond's father and you suddenly decided, for no reason at all, to risk your life on my behalf…”

“And it's easier to believe that Hawk River sent me to test you again,” I said. “I thought we were past that.” I touched her chin but she wouldn't look up.

She said, “If you are working for them—”

“Hey—”

“No. If you are working for them, then you'll go back and report that I can't be trusted.” She said it without emotion, like she was working on a math problem. “And that's that. They'll kill me. Or you'll kill me.”

“Amy, stop it.”

“I just want you to know, Theresa knows nothing about it. Do you understand? I told her nothing.”

“That's enough,” I snapped. “Cut it out. I'm not working for them.”

“Then why are you doing this for me?”

I considered mentioning justice for Ernie Banks, but that was far too glib. She deserved the truth. I owed her that.

“They left you alone a month ago, right? Why the hell do you think they're back? I'm the one who started asking questions about Joan's murder. I'm responsible for this.”

Amy looked up at me. I couldn't read her expression. She said, “You didn't start this.”

“Neither did you,” I said.

“No, but I'm in it. You don't have to be.”

I brushed a hair out of her eyes. “I do have to be.”

She broke contact, moved to the other side of the kitchen, folded her arms across her chest. “Please, no questions this morning. I need some time to think.”

That was my limit.

“Okay, I'm done,” I said. “The back-and-forth game gets old real fast. You need some time to think? Fine.” I snatched my car keys off the kitchen counter and stalked to the front door. Amy ran after me.

I slipped into my shoes and coat and unlocked the door. I said, “Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone. Do not visit Theresa today.
Call and make an excuse. You've got the flu, you don't want her to catch it. Lock the door behind me and don't leave the house. If anything happens, call my cell. I'll be back tonight.”

“Ray, I'm sorry. Please try to understand, it's hard for me to—”

I didn't stick around to hear the excuses and apologies. I left her babbling at the front door and walked away.

 

I stopped at my office and called a contact at DMV, gave her the Malibu's license plate, hung up the phone, and wrote a check for a hundred bucks and put her home address on the envelope. I dropped the envelope down the mail chute in the hallway.

Then I tossed darts at the board until my fax machine buzzed and spat out the answer.

The car was a rental. Rental cars move around the country, sometimes on one-way hires. But I got lucky. This car's “home base” was a rental agency in Chicago, at the north end of the Magnificent Mile. I left the office and called Vince from my car. He didn't answer so I left him a voice mail. Called Terry, left him one, too.

I drove the rest of the way to North Michigan Avenue on autopilot, regretting my blowup with Amy.
She has every right to be wary…she'd be crazy not to be. In her shoes, you'd be just as guarded…maybe more so. Hell, no maybes about it. Some guy just shows up at your door and generously offers to save your life? You'd never believe him.

Still, her reluctance bothered me and I had to remind myself not to take it personally. Truth is, the previous night had been the most intimate I'd had with a woman in a very long time. And I hated to see it lost this morning.

By 11:30 I was standing in the little white office of a car rental chain, talking to a skinny kid in his late twenties. The kid had a tangle of blond curls perched on his head, a shark's tooth on a hemp string around his neck, and the demeanor of a surfer who got stoned in California and woke up in Chicago.

“Dude, I'd love to help you, really,” said the kid, “but I'm not allowed to give out that kind of info, ya know? I mean, like, I could get fired.”

I shifted my hand on the counter so he could see the fifty-dollar bill peeking out from under my fingers. Not so long ago, a twenty would've made an impression on a kid like him. Now it took a fifty.

He wiped his mouth with his hand, said, “I'd like to, but my manager can see if I call up customer info on the 'puter…”

“Forget the computer,” I said. “Tell me what you remember about the customer.”

“Well, he was, like, big? You know, tall? A mean-looking dude, kinda like a cop, but different. Hair real short. Had a long black coat, he put it right there on the counter. And the dude was built.” It was the same guy.

“Remember his name?”

“Naw, man, it was yesterday. We get, like, a lot of customers.” No one had come in since I'd been there. I looked around the empty little office.

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“Well, most of 'em come in at the end of the day. There's a lunch rush, too.”

“When did he come in?”

“Oh, he came in early. Like, nine, ten in the a-m. Wait!” The kid's eyes rolled to the top of his head as he brought a memory into focus. “His name was John. John, something.” He thought some more. “Dude, I'm drawing a blank on the dude's last name.”

“All right, what about mannerisms or anything unusual he said, or—”

“Wait! I got it! Smith. His name was John Smith. I'm sure of it.” He seemed proud to have remembered.

“Tell me you're kidding.”

“No, I swear. That was the dude's name, on his driver's license. Credit card, too. John Smith. I remember now, for sure.”

He didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with the name
John Smith and it's true enough that there are plenty of John Smiths in the world. But I'd bet a week's worth of City Hall graft that this particular dude was not really named John Smith. I was striking out.

“Anything else? Scars, tattoos, anything?”

The kid broke into a wide smile. “Yeah, man, good thinking. Right on. Dude had a tattoo on his forearm. Kinda like a bird or something.”

I grabbed a pen from the counter and sketched the Hawk River logo on a scrap of paper. “Like this?”

“Shit! Yeah, dude. Right on! That's it exactly.”

I left the kid with the fifty and headed back to the parking garage. I'd learned exactly what I'd expected to learn and learning it didn't make me happy.

Amy had speculated that if I were working for Hawk River, I'd report that she couldn't be trusted. Right now Malibu Man was reporting that I'd spent the night with Amy. Which meant they might send someone to lean on her and make her tell them what she told me. I didn't think she'd handle that meeting very well.

But if they killed her, I'd still be around to alert the cops, so they'd probably want to take care of me first. That probably gave me a little time to work.

Probably.

I started for the garage of the 900 North Michigan building and then remembered that I hadn't eaten today. I cut through Bloomingdale's and into the building's expansive atrium, which stretches six stories high and boasts a lot of sand-colored marble and chrome accents and long-hanging ferns. A bright and luxurious shopping mall, for bright and luxurious shoppers.

I bought a ham and cheese panini and a bag of plantain chips from King Café, sat near the green marble fountain and watched people buy things they didn't need at Gucci and Christofle as I ate.

My phone rang. The call display told me it was Vince.

“Vince, I need you on something.”

“Okay, but I gotta tell you what's going on here.”

“Where are you?”

“Wabash, just south of the office. In the diamond district.”

“Look, doesn't matter. I need—”

“Ray, you're gonna want to hear this first.”

“Go.”

“I'm shadowing Dr. Glassman. He's shopping for an engagement ring.”

Shit.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

Vince said, “Sorry. But I figured you'd want to know.”

“Yeah, thanks.”
Maybe I can get over there and talk to her…is she on days or nights?
I couldn't remember.

I snapped out of it, said, “Write down this address…”

“Hold on.” There was a pause on the line. “Okay, hit me.”

I gave him the address. “A woman lives there. Amy Zhang. Chinese. Five-one, one hundred pounds, midthirties. Pretty. Don't approach her. Just park out front and watch the place. If any bad guys show up, don't let them get to her.”

“We expecting bad guys?”

“Maybe.”

“I'm on it.”

“Vince?”

“Yeah?”

“Take your gun.”

I broke the connection and dialed Amy Zhang. She answered on the second ring.

“It's Ray. Just listen. I'm sending someone over. He'll be driving a blue Ford Escort. His name is Vince Cosimo. Black hair, about six-four, big guy. He works for me. He's going to watch out for you until I can get back.”

“Okay.” Her voice was very small and I knew what she was thinking. If I was working for Hawk River, Vince was the guy sent to kill her.

“I told him not to approach you. He'll just sit in his car outside. You don't have to invite him in.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” I hung up and started for the garage. It occurred to me that I might be spending a few nights sitting in Amy Zhang's recliner. I needed a new book. I turned around and headed up the escalators to the Waldenbooks on the sixth level.

I browsed through the Current Events section, focused on books covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I flipped through the indexes, looking for Hawk River and the names of the other private military corporations. Found a few. I took one of the more promising titles to the cash register and paid for it, then crossed to the other side of the atrium and took the escalators back down to the ground floor.

I stopped again at King Café and bought a large black coffee to go. In the little parking garage lobby I stuck a credit card into one of those machines that most garages now have so they don't have to pay a cashier. The machine charged my card $18. I'd been there just over an hour.

About ten yards into the garage, I remembered that I'd left my credit card in the machine, went back to get it.
You have got to get some sleep, you're not twenty anymore.
I'd gotten maybe three hours on Amy's recliner, and I was feeling it in a big way. The coffee would help.

I headed back to my car, thinking about the miracle that is coffee. I was practically nose to nose with the guy when he spoke.

“Ray Dudgeon.”

I stopped dead. There was a fighting knife in his right hand. The tanto blade was anodized black but the sharpened edge glinted in the fluorescent light of the garage.

He said, “You're coming with me.”

It took some effort to tear my eyes away from the blade. I looked up to a face I'd never seen before, tried to smile, and said, “Sure, I'll come along, just don't cut me.”

My right thumb flicked the plastic lid off the Styrofoam cup and I threw twenty ounces of steaming coffee at his face and ran like hell. His scream echoed through the garage as I flew down the ramp and
jerked open the door to the lobby. I cut back into the mall, where there were civilians. Witnesses. Security guards.

It wasn't until I was into the mall that I realized I'd been cut. No pain, I just felt the blood trickling down my left arm.

Fuck it, worry about it later, keep running…

Faces of startled shoppers blurred past as I tore through the mall but no security guards came into view. I heard his footfalls echoing off the marble floor as he ran into the mall behind me and I realized I wouldn't make it out onto Michigan Avenue. My lead wasn't big enough. I'd have to stop and heave the door open and he'd catch up and sink the blade between my ribs.

I turned and ran up the escalator, took the metal steps two at a time.
Clang-clang-clang.
I didn't dare slow to turn and look back.

At the top I pivoted and ran for the next up-escalator, chanced a look down. He was coming up the escalator, fast.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang.
His face was bright red from the burning coffee but he was still faster than me. My lead was shrinking.

I yelled, “He's got a knife! Call the police!” into the open atrium. My voice reverberated through the place, bouncing off flat slabs of polished marble. A woman down below screamed. Another woman's voice echoed, “Call the police!”

I hit the next escalator and continued my frantic climb. When I got to Level 3, I took another quick look back. My call for help hadn't made him give up the chase and he was gaining. He ran into a man on the escalator, knocked him facedown on the metal steps, and scrambled right over him.