into the robe and managed to open the door locks and retrieve my courtesy copy of the Chicago Tribune. I sat on the bed while the bath filled. The news section had nothing about a man in a hockey mask being assaulted in Daley Plaza the previous night; nothing about a man being forced to walk the plank eighty-five storeys above the city; no mention of a corrupt cop throwing his weight around in Grant Park.
I closed the paper and walked stiffly to the bathroom. Didn't take much longer than a bear going over a mountain. I turned off the water, tested it, found it below scalding and steadied myself with my elbows as I lowered my sore self down. Waited for its relaxing properties to take hold.
Yeah, that's me-Jonah the waiter. Waiting for relief from heat and codeine. Waiting for Jenn and Ryan. Waiting for a bright idea that would take me off the hot seat and plant Simon Birk on it.
I was lying flat in the tub in water up to my jaw, my hands up around my ears to keep the gauze wrappings dry, raising and lowering my knee, when I heard a click sound at the door. An entry card going in and out, the lock disengaging, the handle turning.
I used my elbows to get into a sitting position. The bathroom door was halfway open. I must have forgotten to relock the door and set the chain. I could see a tall black woman in a wine-coloured uniform holding a stack of towels. Her skin was coffee-coloured and she was heavily freckled, especially around the eyes, and she was about to see more than she'd bargained for. I called out, 'Hello.'
'Oh, sorry. Housekeeping.'
'I'm a little indisposed,' I called. 'Can you leave those on the bed, please?'
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I thought you were out.'
I was sinking back into the water when I realized I hadn't heard a knock. Heard the card whisper into the lock. Heard the electronic click of the lock release. Heard the handle turn, the door brush open against the grain of the carpet.
No knock.
If she hadn't knocked, or called out a greeting, why would she think I was out? I kept my eyes on the mirror as she passed out of view on the way to the bed. Waited. Saw her come back toward the bathroom, holding one towel flat in one hand, the other hand hidden within its fold.
I was on my way out of the tub when she burst through the door, slashing down at my torso with a long, thin blade. Nothing rubber about this one. It was a good old-fashioned knife meant for gutting. I landed on my back and used my legs to push left and away from the thrust. Her hand plunged into the hot water. I grabbed her wrist but couldn't hold it in my injured hand. She pulled it away and slashed down again. I blocked it. She stuck her other hand in my face and tried to push me under water. I kicked out at her and caught her a glancing blow against the head, just enough to stun her a bit. I wrapped my arm around her knife hand and pinned it there and kicked again, this time catching her a good one, the ball of my foot against her chin. Her head snapped back against the tiled wall. As it bounced forward, I wrapped both ankles around her neck and twisted downward. She lost her footing and fell toward me. When she hit the water, a wave of bathwater coursed into my mouth. I coughed it up, planting my elbows on the bottom of the bath, squeezing my legs together until her face went below the surface. Her free hand clawed at my face. I bit her fingers. She tried to bring her knife hand up. I kept it pinned. The water bubbled furiously around her face, as if piranha were stripping an animal of its flesh. I kept squeezing. My quad muscles shuddered. She tried to gain purchase, to back away from the tub, but water had splashed onto the floor and her feet slipped sideways. One knee gave way beneath her with a sickening crack. Her hands stopped trying to attack and tried to push off against the sides of the bath. I kept the knife hand pinned where it was.
Then the bubbles stopped.
I kept the pressure on for another minute. And one more. When I knew she'd been under water too long to be faking it, I let go. She slumped into the tub, sloshing more water out onto the floor. I scrambled back, looked under me to locate the knife and plucked it gingerly out of the water. My bandaged hands were wet but I didn't care. I dropped the knife on the floor. My chest was heaving, my head pounding from the effort. I wanted to stay in the bath but didn't care for the company. I got out, almost wiping out on the slick floor, and stumbled to the bed and fell on it, wet as a seal. I reached for a towel and was drying off when I heard a loud knock on the door.
'Yes?' I called out.
A woman's voice said, 'Housekeeping!'
Now that's the way it's done, I thought, not knowing whether to laugh, cry or limp back into the bathroom and get the knife off the floor.
'I'm sick,' I said. 'Come back tomorrow.'
'You don't need towels?'
'I've got enough for today, thanks.'
When she was gone I locked every lock there was-deadbolt, security bar, chain-and stuck a chair under the door handle.
CHAPTER 43
I was sick to fucking death of Simon Birk's attempts on my life. Even sicker over what the latest one had made me do.
When Stefano di Pietra had drowned, I'd had the luxury of telling myself I hadn't actually killed him. Hadn't physically laid a hand on him or held him under. Had merely eased out the rock on which his neck had been resting until the water rose over his face.
There was no getting around it this time. I had drowned the woman in the tub, had held her under as she fought for her life. Stefano had been all but paralyzed by his fall onto the rocks in the Don River. She had bucked and slashed and clawed and thrashed until all the air went out of her.
Try getting around that.
I couldn't. There was nowhere to go with it. So I decided I was through trying to gather evidence against Birk, through trying to prove my point. Everyone in any position of authority-Hollinger, my brother, Avi Stern, Birk himself-kept saying it couldn't be done anyway. So enough already. Now it was time to do whatever had to be done to bring him down, make him pay for the corpses he had piled up. If anyone else was going to die on his account, it might as well be him. And Curry if he chose to ride along.
I drained the bathtub and closed the curtain on the corpse inside, then mopped the floor using my feet to push towels around. The wet towels went into the tub as well. Then I called the Tribune newsroom.
'Dude,' Jericho Hale said. 'You stood me the fuck up. Had to buy my own damn Macallan at twelve bucks a shot.'
'I ran into trouble,' I said.
'What kind of trouble would keep you from me?'
'Pirates.'
'Right here in Chicago?'
I told Hale what had happened, leaving out the part in Daley Plaza and any mention of Gabriel Cross.
'Jesus,' he said.
'Do I still get the info you had for me?' I asked.
'Remember I told you Tom Barnett was a head breaker back in the day? So I talked to one of the guys on our police desk-not the newbie you saw, Alvaro, but an old-timer, a real crime dog-and got some of the lowlights of his career.'
'And?'
'The worst jam he ever got into was maybe a dozen years ago, when he first made detective. He and his partner pulled in a guy who matched the description of a rape suspect, wanted for a real vile assault on a fourteen- year-old girl. Guy practically ripped her insides out. So Barnett and his partner questioned the suspect-with extreme prejudice, shall we say. Shoved a damn broomstick up his ass and broke it off. Only problem was, he wasn't the guy. Not only was he not the guy, he was a church-going, God-fearing, Jesus-loving straight-A student whose father represented the Seventh Congressional District of Illinois. Barnett probably would have been kicked off the force, but his partner admitted he instigated it, not Barnett, that Barnett only did what he was told, being the junior partner. So only his partner got kicked off the force. Barnett just got suspended for two weeks without pay.'
