I SAT UNDER THE barbell in the basement of Hammer’s gym staring up at 290 pounds of iron. It had been a while since I’d lifted so much, but it was a chance to distract my mind from all the uncertainty surrounding Tinsley’s disappearance. I had a collection of dots on the page, but none of them appeared sequential. I had left a couple of messages with Violet Gerrigan, but she hadn’t called me back, which was strange, since she typically checked in at least once a day.
I grabbed the barbell with both hands, hoisted myself up one time to loosen my muscles, then put my back flat on the bench and pushed the weight off the rack. It felt heavy but good. As I inhaled, I slowly lowered the barbell just above my chest, then pushed with all my might to avoid the damn thing crushing me. I was two inches from locking the lift when the weight wouldn’t move. I squirmed a little with my shoulders, which typically did the trick, but the barbell still wouldn’t budge. My elbows started to wobble, and I was quickly planning on how I could bail from underneath the weight fast enough without it decapitating me as I let go. Then there was a tug, and my arms felt light. The barbell slapped back into the rack.
“Next time ask for a spot, hotshot,” Hammer said, standing over me. “Only fools have pride in the weight room.”
I shook out my arms and hit the shower. Tonight was Sunday Night Football, which meant pizza-and-beer night. I called in my order of a thin-crust pie-cut at a place called Pizano’s in the South Loop. It was one of the few places in Chicago where you could get something resembling a true New York slice, a habit I’d picked up while studying at Boston College.
I walked out the door and stopped immediately. A stunning woman was leaning delicately on my Porsche. Her evening dress hugged every curve perfectly, and the side slit made it abundantly clear that these legs were made for the runway.
“A sight for all kinds of eyes,” I said, as I approached.
“Dinner plans?” Carolina said. “I’m available.”
“I don’t know if pizza and beer go with that dress,” I said, unlocking the car.
“That’s exactly what I was in the mood for,” she said.
We jumped in the car, and she explained that she’d had a date at some charity dinner with some mini mogul finance guy, but all he wanted to talk about was how many houses he owned and how much expensive metal and carbon fiber he had parked in his ten-car garage. So, she’d ditched him and come looking for me.
We took a window seat at Pizano’s so I could see my illegally parked car. They had the football game on two of the screens over the bar. The Bears, of course, were off to a slow start.
“We have a problem,” she said.
“You have to be home by midnight?”
“I can be out all night,” she said. “I’m all grown up.”
“In more ways than one.”
She cut a small piece of pizza and took a nibble. I wasn’t a big fan of the whole knife-and-fork thing when it came to eating pizza, but it seemed to fit her perfectly.
“Where did you get that number you gave me?” she asked.
“It’s probably best you don’t know. If anything goes down, you can claim ignorance. Why do you ask?”
“There’s an F1 clearance on it,” she said. “I have the privilege, but if I access it through the internal system, my fingerprints will be all over it.”
F1 security clearances were used only when the information or person it had been attached to was of the highest priority. A small, tightly supervised list of people had an F1 clearance, and even then, the system was set up so that once someone accessed the information, an electronic record was created of when they made access. Select information was hidden behind the F1 wall, and it usually involved informants, high-level people connected to the Fifth Floor, and Feds in the FBI or intelligence services who handled highly sensitive information or whose identity needed to be protected.
“Is there a work-around? Burke knows I’ve got someone inside, but I don’t want him to know it’s you.”
“Maybe, but it would take me a couple of days to try it. I would have to go outside the system. How bad do you need the identity?”
“Given what you just told me, really bad,” I said. “I’m curious as to why this person’s identity is being so highly protected.”
“Not many possibilities. An informant, high-level political operative connected to the Fifth Floor, a Fed, or someone in IA.”
“They give Internal Affairs an F1 clearance? Since when?”
“Since the Robertson mess, when he had two of them killed. All IA-related info is parked behind the F1 now.”
A couple of years ago, Sergeant Gary Robertson was being investigated for pinching money, drugs, and guns from the busts he and his partner had made. Someone had leaked the dirt to IA, who’d opened a confidential investigation and started putting the pieces together. A total of ten officers had been implicated, but Robertson was the ringleader. In the middle of the investigation, the two lead investigators, who were still unknown to Robertson because it was still confidential, had been mysteriously shot and killed while sitting in their car in the West Loop, not far from the police academy. Robertson had gone through back channels and uncovered their identities, then ordered the hit. He’d eventually been convicted and slapped with two life sentences.
“Every time I think I know where this thing is going, it heads off in another direction,” I said.
“You think she’s still alive?”
“Depends on what time of the day you ask me. Sometimes I think so; then I learn something new, and I think she’s gone. I’m going to Connecticut tomorrow to talk to her ex-boyfriend. See what he
