“You should see the fireworks on Wednesday and Saturday nights,” I said. “Right over there in the harbor with just the lighthouse behind them.”
“Too nice a view to enjoy alone,” she said with a smile. Her eyes said a whole lot more.
“I always have Stryker,” I said. He lifted his head from the couch for a moment, waiting for a command. When none came, he returned to his outstretched legs, his eyes remaining focused on our fetching visitor.
“I was talking the human female variety,” she said.
“That can be complicated sometimes.”
I carefully picked up a cracker and a piece of cheese with a slice of salami. Once I was certain it wouldn’t fall apart, I quickly slid it all in my mouth and crunched. She pierced an olive with a toothpick and nibbled on it.
“It took a lot of work to get that number,” she said. “I had to get really creative.”
“Did you protect yourself?” I asked.
“Even though I often find you irresistible, I’m no fool. I still like my job.”
I smiled.
“So, who was our mystery person?”
“It wasn’t a person. It came back as a business. The Gerrigan Real Estate Corp., just like the license plate.”
I wasn’t surprised. That meant there was a decent chance Gerrigan had known about his daughter’s pregnancy the entire time—or at least that Tinsley wasn’t afraid of him finding out. Violet Gerrigan had said she didn’t know, but I didn’t believe her. Maybe she hadn’t known when she first hired me, but I felt like she knew at the time she fired me.
“What are you thinking?” Carolina asked.
“How treacherous this guy really is,” I said. “If he would send a couple of guys to follow me, and I’m trying to find his supposedly beloved daughter, what would he do to a rehabilitated street kid who had gotten caught skinny-dipping in the family gene pool?”
“Not throw him a welcome party.”
“I’ve called that number several times, and no one answered.”
“Doesn’t make sense she would give the number to a phone he doesn’t answer much,” Carolina said after another perfect nibble of her olive.
“Unless he wasn’t answering because he didn’t recognize my number.”
“But it also makes sense that it’s him, considering it was protected behind an F1 clearance. Who else at the company would have the connection to Mayor Bailey that would warrant this kind of protection? Gerrigan’s at the top of the food chain.”
I confidently smoothed some of the fig-and-pepper spread on a piece of bread and took a reasonable bite so that I would appear somewhat mannerly. It had been a long time since I had enjoyed this view with a woman whose beauty outshone it. At that moment I was feeling damn lucky.
“I don’t want to know how or where you got that number,” she said.
I thought about what my father had first told me at the tennis center. Better understand the relationship dynamics, and you’ll do a better job of making your pieces fit together.
“It’s all starting to come together,” I said.
“Are you gonna be all right?” she said, taking another nibble of an olive. “I’m a little worried. Two of his men are following you, his wife has tried to buy your silence, and now we find out you had what must’ve been his private cell number and didn’t even know it. I know I don’t need to tell you this, but I will anyway. You need to be careful. Randolph Gerrigan is a very powerful man with very powerful friends.”
“Every time I turn a corner, he’s there,” I said. “Every thread I pull, he’s at the other end. It reminds me of what Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote about Professor Moriarty. ‘He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans.’”
“So, what are you going to do next?” she asked.
“The only thing I know how to do. Quiver a radiation.”
42
ON AN EARLY Saturday morning, Mechanic and I were set up outside of an elegant stone mansion in Oak Park, a suburb ten minutes west of the city. Mechanic had drawn Dr. Patel’s name out of my White Sox hat, which meant I was left with her husband. Dr. Weems was the first to drive down the cobblestone driveway in a dark-blue S600 Mercedes sedan. I gave him a block’s lead, then quickly fell behind him. He seemed to be in a hurry as he got onto the Eisenhower Expressway and immediately started bobbing in and out of traffic on his way into the city.
Fifteen minutes later he pulled off at Division and headed west toward the Wicker Park neighborhood. He turned down North Wood Street and pulled into a small parking lot behind a row of storefronts. I kept my position on the street and surveyed the premises. There were three buildings next to each other. The buildings to the left and right appeared to be a mixture of retail and residential, with the apartments occupying the second and third floors. The middle building was only a single-story structure, but it was wider than its neighbors. It didn’t have any signage or windows, and it offered only a solitary black door. Weems jumped out of his car, wearing a leather jacket with pale green surgical scrubs underneath. He pulled a Louis Vuitton duffel bag from the back seat and carried a silver coffee thermos as he quickly walked toward the middle building. He pulled a key card out of his wallet and used it to unlock the black door. I noticed two surveillance cameras posted on the building he entered, which struck me as a little odd, since the other two buildings didn’t have any.
I pulled back around to Division Street. A Boost Mobile store was on the ground floor of the building to the west, and a guitar shop occupied the
