'I'm not supposed to-'
'Please,' she said. 'It's cold out here.' The evidence of that was mighty clear. The guard stared at her nipples like he was trying to memorize them. 'I won't touch anything I'm not supposed to,' Jenn said. 'I promise.'
'Well,' he said, looking back at the deserted site, then at the Ambersons, then quickly up to Jenn's wide blue eyes. 'Maybe just for a minute.'
He had a heavy ring of keys hooked to his belt with a retractable chain. He pulled them away and unlocked a heavy padlock. As soon as he rolled the gate open, Ryan moved in and stuck his Glock in the guard's ear. He handed the guard a pair of swim goggles whose lenses had been covered over with hockey tape.
'Slip these on,' he said.
The guard's weight sagged back to his belt. 'A set-up,' he sighed. 'I should have known.'
Ryan said, 'You think?' Avi and Jenn went to wait by the elevator and keep watch for any cars turning into the site. We took the guard, whose name tag said he was Henry, into the trailer. I locked the door and closed the blinds over the only window. Ryan took Henry's elbow and steered him behind a service counter that had been built at one end. He told Henry to kneel and put his hands behind his back. Henry looked like he was going to die of a heart attack before making it to the ground.
'If I was going to shoot you,' Ryan said, 'would I bother tying your hands?' He pushed his foot lightly into Henry's knees and they gave way, and he sank rather gently to the floor. Ryan got skate laces out of his backpack and bound Henry's wrists.
'We're going to make a phone call now,' Ryan said.
Since he had already heard Ryan's voice, I kept quiet.
'Who do you call in an emergency?' Ryan asked.
'Mr. Curry. Francis Curry.'
'From which phone?'
'Mine. On the table there.'
'You're going to call that number and tell Mr. Curry a strange black woman in a hotel uniform showed up at the site and demanded a meeting with Simon Birk, immediately, or she's going to the police and tell them about this morning.'
'A strange black woman. You don't want me to say African-American? That's what they tell me I'm supposed to use.'
'Just tell him she wants to see Simon Birk. Alone. And she wants double her fee, in cash. Got that?'
'Double. In cash.'
'If he asks what she looks like, you say tall with lots of freckles.' Those were the main details I'd remembered and given Ryan.
'Tall, freckles.'
'And a hotel uniform,' Ryan said. 'Like a chambermaid, don't forget that.'
'Okay.'
'If he asks to talk to her, you say she took the hoist up to the top of the building. You tried to stop her but she pulled a knife on you. Got that?'
'Okay.'
'Say it,' Ryan ordered.
'A woman came to the gate-'
'What woman?'
'Tall, with freckles.'
'And?'
'And a knife.'
'Okay, Henry,' Ryan said evenly. 'You got those goggles on, which is good for your overall prospects. But if you didn't have them on and you could see the look I'm giving you now? This is a look, Henry, that has brought a hundred deadbeats, snitches, tough guys, bikers and other unfortunate souls to their knees. So believe me when I tell you that if you say anything other than what I told you, anything cute, your blood will spill and your life will end right here.'
'I don't want that,' Henry said.
'Course you don't. So make it short and keep it sweet.'
Henry turned in a fine performance as Night Security Guard #1. With Ryan standing over him, listening in on the cocked receiver, he stuck to Ryan's script. Didn't deviate or elaborate or say anything that sounded coded. Kept most of the fright out of his voice.
'Yessir,' he finally said. 'Forced her way past me and went right to the top, it looks like.' Listened, nodded, said 'Uh-huh' twice. Then, 'Really?'
Ryan gave me a thumbs-up.
'If you say so,' Henry said. 'If you're sure, Mr. Curry. You know I wouldn't on anyone else's… Okay, good night then.'
Ryan ended the call and turned the phone off. He said, 'Mr. Curry told Henry to go home, take the rest of the night off, still get paid the full shift.'
Ryan told Henry to lie on his side. He tied the man's ankles together with a skate lace then stretched a strong elastic, the kind used to hold hockey shin pads on, around Henry's shins. He knotted a third hockey lace between the bound wrists and ankles. Henry wasn't uncomfortable but nor could he move an inch.
Ryan opened a side pocket of the backpack and took out a pair of conical earplugs and slipped them into Henry's ears. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'They've never been used.' Then he looked around the trailer and found a set of headphone-sized hearing protectors and slipped them over Henry's ears.
'He wouldn't hear an explosion,' Ryan said.
Ryan unclipped the keys from Henry's belt and flipped them to me. He produced a roll of duct tape and wrapped two lengths around Henry's mouth. Henry was now out of sight, out of mind, out of human contact.
'Check this out,' I said. On a table next to Henry's half-done Sun-Times puzzle and Thermos were two walkie-talkies set in chargers. The green lights were steady: two fully charged units.
I handed one to Ryan, who pressed the talk button and said, 'Breaker, breaker.' It came through loud and clear on my unit. 'You try,' he said. 'Leg breaker, leg breaker. Over.' 'Very funny. Over. Get the fuck out. Over.' He unscrewed the bulbs that lit the trailer and closed and locked the door behind him, settling into the shadows to wait for Curry and Birk. I walked to the elevator, wondering where Ryan had dumped the woman's body. In the Chicago River, in a hockey bag weighted with stones or bowling balls from the Sports Authority? Down in the caisson of an unfinished building, a ton of concrete and rebar for her headstone?
I tried to resist the images coming to mind; there might be other bodies to dispose of before the night was through.
CHAPTER 46
The top of the Birkshire Millennium Skyline was not my favourite place in Chicago. Then again, neither was Millennium Park, Daley Plaza, Avi's den or my bathroom at the Hilton, so the competition wasn't that stiff.
It was colder and windier than it had been the previous night. The first of November in Chicago: batten down the hatches. Jenn had her hands thrust deep in the pockets of a navy peacoat. Avi looked like he was sweating and shivering at the same time. I had a sudden flashback of him at Har Milah: always sweaty, even at four in the morning when we started work to get in our hours before the hot sun came up. Beads forming on his forehead, running down around his eyes, his shirt darkening as sweat ran down his chest and back, his hands damp whenever we shook, even if he'd already wiped them on the back of his pants. I hoped his palms didn't get so clammy now that he dropped his recorder like a bar of soap. Like us, it wouldn't survive a fall from this height.
'You know what you're going to do?' Jenn asked me.
'I have an idea.'
'That's it?'
The walkie-talkie crackled and Ryan's voice said, 'They're here.' So I didn't have to answer.
