I reached into my pocket and pulled out the security badge and card he’d given me in Colorado and dropped it on his desk. “I sort of accidentally gave you the wrong badge when you asked for it.”
“You are very clever, Mr. Mason. So clever, that you had to know I would kill you once I knew how much you know. Which means you have a plan. Okay, you have exactly five minutes to convince me that you staying alive is no threat to me or my plans and exactly how your value to me outweighs the danger you pose.”
“First, I don’t care about Chicago politics. I really don’t even care about federal politics, for the most part. What I do care about is that little girl. So here’s the deal. You let me take her. You leave her and me alone. Simple.”
Marsh blinked twice. “Is that all? You want me to hand you the one piece of evidence that ties me to everything and let you both walk away?”
I tossed the photographs I’d snapped on my phone. Photographs of him meeting with the Bloods hierarchy, along with his and Keisha’s DNA results.
“Well, it would be nice if you would turn yourself in and confess to everything, but that’s a long shot. So, we’ll compromise. Let me have her and you get to make your run for the presidency. I’ll make sure she never knows and that no one else ever sees the evidence.”
Marsh closed his eyes and breathed in and out through his nose. “Once again you disappoint me, Mr. Mason.”
“Yeah, well, join the club. This really is the best way for you. Personally, I want to kill you very badly. You’ve hurt a lot of people. You killed my friend Ziggy and a lot of others, just so you could keep your bad habits a secret. But I’ll let that go… for the little girl… I’ll let it all go. Besides, you can’t get away with killing Keisha now anyway, not with all the press. So give her to me and let’s let this thing be done with.”
“That, Mr. Mason, is where you are very wrong. This is Chicago and bad things happen to good people all the time in Chicago. Accidents, shootings, muggings. All sorts of terrible things. Also, people go missing here. Lots of people. They go missing and no one even questions where they went. They are just gone.” He made a little fluttering motion with his fingers and thumb.
“I’m not going to let you take the little girl…”
I broke in, “Your daughter, you mean.”
He paused, looked at me with death in his eyes, the same way Morgan Freeman looked at Ben Kingsley in the movie Lucky Number Sleven, and said, “She has to go away. And so do you.” He motioned to Clyde to shoot me, only Clyde didn’t pull the trigger. Clyde didn’t pull the trigger because the man standing beside him wasn’t Clyde. Clyde was dead.
Marsh looked up to see why Clyde hadn’t shot me and saw Jerome looking down at him, dressed in Clyde’s suit and wearing his security badge.
“She ain’t your daughter,” said Jerome. “She’s mine.”
Marsh didn’t look scared at all. He was a tough man.
“I’m a United States Senator. You will never get away with…”
Jerome shot him once through the top of his head.
Jerome looked at me.
“Told you he wouldn’t go for it,” he said.
“I had to give him the chance.”
“No you didn’t.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I just shrugged.
“Clair’s with those people?”
“Yeah,” I said. “In a little room over there. They aren’t really her relatives.”
“How much time we got?”
“Not much.” I looked up into his dark eyes. “You know they’ll find you… you and Clair. Sooner or later.”
He shook his head slowly. “No they won’t.” He jerked the gun up and shot me.
46
The bullet hit me just above the left hip, tearing through skin and meat and knocking me back and around. One hand went instinctively to the wound while the other, my right, grabbed for and found my Smith and Wesson. As I completed the spin, I shoved the gun forward, but I was too slow and Jerome caught me in the temple with the butt of the suppressed pistol. I fell to one knee, the room whirling and then I was on my back with Jerome standing over me, way up high, the bore of the gun staring me in the face.
“This here’s goin’ to play out in one of two ways. You kill me or I kill you. If you kill me, then what you got to do is make sure the story of this here rat gets out and my Clair stays safe, with a nice family that will take care of her. I’m putting you in charge of making sure that happens no matter what.”
“I’m not going to kill you, Jerome,” I said, my voice sounding garbled and far away inside my head. “No way.”
“Then I’ll sure kill you, and then go down and get my Clair and probably have to kill a bunch of people on the way out. You want that to happen? Do you? More dead on your head and me with Clair for the rest of her life or till someone catch up with us? That the way you want this to go?”
I felt the heavy metal frame of my 4506 still resting in my hand by my side.
“Jerome…”
“I’m not smart in most ways. I know that, you do too, but in this I’m being smart. I think you know that too. This way Clair stays safe and has a good life. You tell them that I snuck in here and killed the senator and shot you, but that you were able to shoot me back. Simple as that. Keeps you out of trouble with the law and gives my Clair her chance in this world.”
“No,” I said. “We stick to the plan. I lay it out for them, then…”
He let
