“I'm on your side, just not officially. You don't need to drag any more asses down with you. Now, you gotta turn Towne over to me, and you two have to be standing before Eriq Santiva and his boss, Hemmings, and maybe even Fischer this afternoon. Santiva said, 'No ifs, ands, or buts.' I guess you've been cornered.”
“We'll have to make arrangements to get Towne here to turn him over to your custody.”
“After all,” continued Laughlin, “he's got to be returned to Oregon.”
“Sure… I expected as much,” she said.
“Meantime, there's been some buzz on the street about our guy. People have his face now in their homes, on the tube and on the front pages of the papers. He was spotted early this morning on Southport in the Lakeview and Wrigleyville area at the same time.”
“So reliable.”
“More than one source. One a newspaper delivery kid, another a shopkeeper, bakery guy just opening up. They each reported a man looking like Gahran with an oversized, stuffed blue bag slung over his shoulder.”
“That's good. Give us the location. Hell, run us there.”
“But you're off the case.”
“Not until we get on the plane.”
“Guy at the Greyhound terminal also spotted someone fitting our yearbook photo from the Tribune s page one. Again a guy with an oversized blue bag using a locker there last night, stowed the blue bag there and picked it up early this A.M.”
“Traveling light,” commented Sharpe.
“But where are his sculptures? The crates?” she asked.
Sharpe began musing aloud. “Maybe in storage or… If… just suppose Wellingham had gotten him a gig here? Introduced him to someone in Chicago for a showing? That would explain where all his stuff might be.”
“If he's rented space, he'd have stowed the blue bag somewhere other than the bus station,” Jessica said.
“I can tell you none of the major galleries would touch his stuff if it's anything like Orion's,” Laughlin assured them.
“But a medium-sized gallery, a small one… and there are countless other venues where art or so-called art is displayed.”
“No way to cover them all,” said Laughlin. “Certainly not before you guys have to board that plane.”
“We can start with all the papers, including the neighborhood papers, especially those covering Wrigleyville and this Lakeview area you mentioned.”
“That'd be one way. If his stuff has been advertised or given a freebie mention in a 'Who's Who' or 'What's Happening' column.”
“Even so… he'd never be so foolish as to stick around for a showing of his art, would he?” asked Petersaul from her stomach at the bed, having overheard everything. “I still have twenty/twenty vision and my ears ain't bad, either,” she joked.
They returned to Petersaul and included her in the remainder of the discussion. Laughlin said, “This guy hasn't exactly kept a low profile. Hell, he's at damn Navy Pier tossing Matisak memorabilia off the Ferris wheel. Made one hell of a big show. Yeah, he's just wacko enough-”
“Or arrogant enough-” interjected Sharpe.
“-to stick around to see how his showing goes. He has to know it will be his first and last.”
“I'll make a deal with you, Harry,” said Jessica. “Towne for all the help you can put on the street for this dragnet.”
“You gotta turn Towne over regardless. You've got no bargaining chips, but be assured, I'll put every available man on the hunt, and we'll enlist every agent and detective in the city on it. We canvass the near North Side neighborhoods for any sign, any flyer, any word of mouth at the coffee shops about this guy's debut Chicago showing.”
“If it's not advertised in any of the papers,” muttered Petersaul wincing in pain, “then whoever's got Gahran s stuff to show, the stuff that Lucinda Wellingham supposedly threatened Orion with, Harry? It's going to be a small, small gallery with no ad budget.”
“Hang in, Pete,” Jessica said to her as they left to continue the search for Gahran.
“What else am I going to do?”
The word on Milos was that he was working toward a recovery, but that he'd be away from his job for at least a month, perhaps more.
Agent Cates and Liam Rielsen lay in the morgue in the basement, the body of each man eerily divested of their backbones.
TWENTY-TWO
Scream like the Devil's baby.
CPD and FBI agents fanned out all over Chicago's near
North Side. Every art gallery and bar and coffeehouse that ever exhibited a stick of artwork, particularly those known for “outer limits” artwork, were paid a visit and even if they never heard of Giles Gahran or his artwork, they were questioned about anyone new in the neighborhood, any new buzz in the area about a hot new artist with whom Orion could not hold a candle.
Nothing came of the initial canvass.
Other operatives combed the newspapers, from the most prestigious to the smallest and avant-garde or the unusual like The Art of the Onion.
Three o'clock came and went. Laughlin had chosen to ignore his orders, to claim he had seen them off at the airport and that had been the last he had seen of them, and that they had given him a false lead on the whereabouts of Towne.
The list of coffeehouses, bars and meeting places in the enclaves and tightly knit neighborhoods in and around Wrigleyville, Lincoln Park, Lakeview and others was astounding. Jessica knew they would need a miracle to find this needle in the haystack, and even if they did, there was no guarantee that Giles Gahran would be foolish enough to expose himself again as he had at Navy Pier. That he would be foolish enough to show up at his own gallery showing.
But then where was he?
Every exit from the city had been closed off to him. Both airports. Trains at Union and Northwestern, the Greyhound and Metra stations. Everyone had his picture. Still, he could have hitchhiked out or rented a private vehicle, using a stolen card. There were simply too many highways leading out of this hub to throw up roadblocks and shut them all down. Besides, they'd acted too late for such action to be effective.
“He's hiding here somewhere… someplace close,” Jessica said to Richard. They sat in a coffee shop called BeBo's having Irish coffees. Neither of them had had much sleep in the past twenty-four hours, and each struggled with fatigue.
Time had grown late as the clock neared 6 P.M. “If he does have a showing, it could be tomorrow or the following day and not tonight at all,” suggested Richard.
“True enough, and we're extremely late in not complying with HQ. In fact, they'll be sending U.S. marshals after us if we don't soon turn ourselves in.”
“On the FBI's most-wanted list, heh?”
“We are out of time, Richard.”
“I know now why Darwin hasn't gotten here yet from Portland, Jess.”
“Tell me why.”
“I did some discreet checking. The reason Oregon didn't hold Darwin on charges.”
