The Third Rail (3 page)

"Let's get a coffee," he said.

I nodded and we walked back across the street.

"Why am I not surprised you're here?"

I shrugged. "What did you expect?"

"Exactly. What do you think?"

"About what?" I said.

"The press."

"Hysterical, as usual. Maybe even more so."

"This is going to be a fucking zoo."

"You got that right."

We walked into a Starbucks and ordered. Then we sat by the window and looked out at the street.

"You got one shooter here, Vince."

Rodriguez stared me down over his cup of coffee. "You sure about that?"

"Seems logical to me."

The detective took a sip. "One's a walk-up with a handgun. The other, a sniper with a rifle."

"You thinking they're not connected?"

Rodriguez shook his head. "I didn't say that. Just doesn't fit the normal pattern."

I shrugged. "It's the same guy."

"Or guys," Rodriguez said. "Let's talk about your alley."

The detective placed a napkin between us and sketched out
the scene at Cornelia. "You turn the corner here and see a set of footprints tracking all the way down this alley. Right?"

I nodded.

"Okay, the snow had been falling ten minutes. Correct?"

"Tops," I said.

"And there's just one set of prints?"

"Just the one."

"But when you follow the prints, the guy is waiting for you. Halfway down the alley, behind a Dumpster."

"Maybe he doubled back?" I said.

"There'd be two sets of footprints."

"Not if he walked back in his own tracks."

"What is he, Daniel fucking Boone?"

"What are you saying, Detective?"

"What I'm saying is this guy, your shooter, runs down the alley and around the corner." Rodriguez drew a line with an arrow tracing the route. "But a second guy was working with him. Waiting behind the Dumpster."

"To ambush me?"

"Exactly."

I shook my head. "The guy that put the gun on me was the Southport shooter."

"You can't be sure."

"He had blood splatter on his coat. Gotta be the shooter."

Rodriguez studied his drawing for a moment. "Okay, how about this? Second guy is set up in the alley. He sees our shooter take the corner and starts running."

"And the shooter takes the second guy's place behind the Dumpster," I said. "That's how it went down. Had to be."

"Maybe," Rodriguez said. "But here's the ballbreaker ..."

"Why?"

"Exactly. Why would our shooter have an accomplice waiting in the alley, for you or anyone else, to come by? Unless that was the point of the whole exercise, the reason they shot up the station at Southport in the first place."

"If I was the target, why not shoot me in the head when you have the chance? Why let me go? Doesn't make sense."

Rodriguez sighed and threw his coffee cup into a barrel. "Since when do assholes like this make sense?"

I was about to respond when my cell phone buzzed. I picked up and found some answers at the other end of the line. Not to mention someone I like to think of as a grade-A asshole.

N
elson held the cell phone tight to his ear, looked across the street, and through Starbucks' front window.

"Michael Kelly, how are you?"

"Do I know you?" Kelly's voice was gruff and aggressive. Certain, but curious. Pure cop, even if the man himself was no more.

"Do you know me? I believe I put a gun to your head earlier this morning. A lot of fun that. Then I picked up a Remington 700 with a scope and blew the brains out of one of Chicago's many drones on the CTA. If you want to check my bona fides, that is."

The silhouette in Starbucks raised his chin and gestured to the cop sitting next to him. Nelson smiled.

"Tell Detective Rodriguez, the bullet's a Nosler AccuBond, one-eighty grain, loaded into a Black Hills .308 Winchester. Specially designed to fire through glass. By the way, how's the coffee there? Starbucks is a piece of shit in my book. Then again, I heard they're grinding their own beans. Getting back to basics. I like that."

Kelly had to be surprised he was being watched. Still, the man's head didn't move.

"You didn't look around. Very good, Kelly. You'd never see me anyway. And don't worry. I have my eye on you, but not through the scope of a weapon. That's long gone, so tell Chicago's finest not to look too hard for it."

"What do you want?"

"What do I want?" Nelson snorted into the cell. "I don't want you dead. Could have checked that off the to-do list today. No, you're going to suffer a little bit first. A matter of honor, I think."

"What would you know about honor?"

"Homer pegged it as a zero-sum game. The more you suffer, the greater my glory."

Kelly's silhouette seemed to stiffen at the classical reference. "You're gonna die, asshole."

"Undoubtedly. The question is: How many am I taking into the hole with me?"

Nelson cut the line and waited. Kelly flipped his phone shut and leaned across to the detective named Rodriguez. Nelson could see them talking. Then the detective reached for a radio and held it close to his lips. Nelson unplugged the adapter he'd used to alter his voice. He tossed his cell phone into the Dumpster he was crouched behind and stripped off the skin-color gloves he had on. Then he pulled out a shopping cart filled with old cans and newspapers and began to push it down the alley. Somewhere a church bell struck twelve. The old man picked up his pace. If he hustled, he could still make the 12:30 mass.

I
watched as a woman standing ten feet away ordered a skim mocha, no whip. Rodriguez was whispering into his radio, telling someone somewhere that the killer, or maybe his accomplice, had just given me a ring. The woman was in her early thirties, with light brown hair tied back into a ponytail and a large emerald cat pinned to her dark blue coat. She smiled as the tall, angular barista pushed her drink across the counter. Then the woman took a sip and found her way to a corner table looking out at the street. She pulled out a paperback, tucked one leg underneath her, and began to read. It looked pretty peaceful, pretty nice. I wanted nothing more than to join her. Then Rodriguez got done with his radio machinations and gave me a tap on the shoulder.

"We gotta go."

I knew that was coming. As we exited the Starbucks, four cruisers sealed off the block. Ten cops got out and began to comb alleys, roust bums, and shake down regular folks on the street. I figured too little, too late.

"You got a car?" Rodriguez said.

"No."

"Good." Rodriguez popped the locks on his Crown Vic. "Get in."

Five minutes later, we were out of the Loop and headed west.

"Not going to headquarters?" I said.

The detective shook his head. "Looks like the feds might be taking over. Possible terrorist acts."

"Bet downtown loved that."

"Brass doesn't mind. If it goes well, we'll stick our nose in the trough, suck up as much glory as we can. If we have bodies stacking up on L platforms in a week and a half, we got someone to blame it on."

"Don't you love your job?"

"Funny guy. Right now you're the star of the show."

"Great."

"That's right. Now, talk to me about the guy on the phone. Was he legit?"

"You tell me."

Rodriguez took a left onto Canal. "A patrol found a rifle in the trash. Remington with a scope."

"He told me we wouldn't find it," I said.

"Guess he lied. Try to get over it."

"How about ammo?"

Rodriguez took a right and accelerated down the block. "We'll know more when we pull the lead out of our victim. But there were three rounds in the rifle."

"And?"

"Black Hills Gold, .308 Winchester. Just like your boy said."

"This guy wasn't our shooter."

"How do you figure?"

"He knew we were sitting in a Starbucks, which means he was close by, watching."

"So?"

"Who's gonna shoot up an L train, then hang around the scene and call me for kicks?"

"Then he's our accomplice?" Rodriguez said. I shrugged as we came up on a line of traffic stopped at a red light.

"One more thing." Rodriguez looked over. "They found a second body downtown."

"On the train?"

The detective shook his head. "Building on Lake. Building manager got his throat cut. Apartment looks over the tracks."

"So the manager maybe barges in on our shooter?"

"Or the manager was helping him and then became expendable. Either way, we'll process it. Pull any rental records."

"Our guy isn't that stupid."

"Really?" Rodriguez lifted an eyebrow. "If you got all the answers, let me ask you this: Why are these geniuses calling you?"

"Not a clue."

"Might want to do some figuring on that before we sit down with the feds. You can start with how these guys got your cell phone number. And end with why they didn't drop the hammer on you this morning."

"Shit."

"Exactly. Let's get moving here."

Rodriguez flicked on his siren and flashers. The sea of cars parted, and the detective hit the gas.

N
elson rumbled his shopping cart to a stop at the corner of Superior and State and looked up at the white stone of Holy Name Cathedral. The morning had gone as well as he could have hoped. Robles had gotten their attention. Kelly was involved. Now it was time to make them understand why.

Nelson stashed his cart in an alley and trudged up the steps. With the push of a finger, ten tons' worth of bronze door swung open, and he slipped inside. The 12:30 mass was just starting. The regular crowd was there. Maybe fifty people, mostly folks from work who used their lunch hour to pray. Nelson took a seat in the back and looked them over. The standard hypocrites, getting on their knees and groveling when they needed something: a clean X-ray from the doctor, a phone call from an old girlfriend, a pregnancy test with an empty round window. When you got right down to it, there were very few atheists in the foxholes of life. It was something the Catholic church had understood for centuries and counted on.

To his right, Nelson saw a bench full of three bums like
himself, except they were already asleep. The church tolerated them as long as they didn't smell too bad or snore too loud. The service usually ran twenty-five minutes, tops. The priest was an old one. No surprise there. He was talking about running through your own personal Rolodex, checking off the people you've met, places you've been, and things you've done.

"How does your Rolodex look?" the sanctimonious bastard croaked, staring down his saintly nose at the great unwashed. "Does it bear up under scrutiny? Do you have the right balance in your life? The right priorities? Or are you allowing your time on earth to be bought and sold, bartered away in the minutiae of the everyday, the pursuit of the material and your own comfort? Indeed."

The priest let the last flourish hang as he shook his long head from side to side and tucked his hands inside embroidered robes.

I'll show you some fucking priorities, Nelson thought and let his eyes wander up to the ceiling. Five galeri hung there, red hats with wide brims, representing five dead Chicago cardinals. Five princes of the church, more hypocrites presiding over an empire that was as rotten as it was rich, as calculating as it was pretentious.

Nelson felt inside an inner pocket for the small brown bottle. It had a cork stopper in it. He stood up and wandered into the rear vestibule. A Chicago cop was there, loaded down with a radio, nightstick, and gun and sweating in a bulletproof vest. He considered Nelson's filth and turned back toward the service. Nelson shuffled over to the stone cistern that held the holy water and waited. Communion was called, and the cop went forward to get his wafer. Nelson dipped dirty fingers in
the bowl and blessed himself with the magic water. Then he slipped the brown bottle from his jacket and tipped its contents into the bowl.

Communion was over and people were starting to wander to the back of the church. Nelson stepped away from the bowl and watched a mother approach, young child in tow. Nelson smiled. The woman recoiled. Still, she was Catholic and soldiered on, pretending to like the bum and nodding in his direction. She touched her fingers to the water and blessed herself. The young girl beside Mom held her arms up. Before the woman could react, Nelson lifted the girl so she was level with the cistern. He smiled again at the mother as her child sprinkled the water across forehead and cheeks. The mother reached for the child, hustling away once she had the girl back in her arms. Nelson watched them go. Then he crouched in a corner as the rest of the congregation filed out. A couple dozen took holy water. After a bit, the church was empty. Nelson walked outside and shuffled his way to the back of the building. He found his shopping cart, gritted his teeth, and began to push into the wind along State Street.

R
odriguez and I walked into FBI headquarters at a little after noon. A young Asian woman in a blue suit took our names and guns in exchange for plastic IDs. Then she walked us through a door and down a hallway, where she passed us off to a young white man in a brown suit. He put us in a small office and told us someone would be with us shortly. An hour later, the door to the office opened. On the other side was a young black man in a gray suit. He took us another twenty feet to a conference room, filled with all sorts of men and women, clad in all sorts of suits. They all stopped talking as we walked in, and everyone seemed exceptionally good at not smiling.

"This is Detective Vince Rodriguez and, I suspect, Michael Kelly?" The man speaking carried his sixty or so years alarmingly well. His face was largely unlined, his eyes clear, his hair an efficient salt-and-pepper flattop. He cloaked broad shoulders in a custom-cut three-button suit and walked with the natural grace of an athlete. On his left wrist, he wore a gold watch; on his left hand, a wedding ring. He shot his cuffs as he approached, flashing a set of FBI logos disguised as cuff links.