The Third Rail Read online

  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.

  CHAPTER 9

  Rodriguez 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.

  “Dick Rudolph. Deputy director of the FBI.”

  I shook the deputy director’s hand and glanced toward Rodriguez, wondering how and why the FBI’s second-in-command happened to be in Chicago, and how and why he didn’t have better things to do than talk to me. Rudolph seemed to read my mind.

  “I’m in Chicago on some unrelated business, was scheduled to fly out this afternoon, when this thing jumped up. Sit down, Mr. Kelly.”

  I took a seat beside Rodriguez. Rudolph staked out the head of the table and did his best to make me think I was at least the second-most-important guy in the room.

  “As you might imagine,” Rudolph said, “the nature of these crimes has sparked concern along several different lines, including possible terrorist acts. The Bureau has stepped in to help, and I decided to sit in on today’s meeting.”

  Rudolph turned to the rest of the table. “Mr. Kelly is a former Chicago police officer. Now, a private investigator. As you all know, he was on the Southport L platform this morning and confronted our suspect in an alley. He also took the call from our suspect. You have copies of his statement and details on the call. We’ve asked Mr. Kelly to come in and see if he could be of any further help.”

  His role apparently played, the deputy director sat back and waited. A woman across the table cleared her throat. She was thirty-five, maybe forty, with nervous eyes and a tough mouth that would have been attractive if it wasn’t so disapproving. I’d seen it before. Battle fatigue from too many years in the Old Boys’ Club.

  “Mr. Kelly, my name is Katherine Lawson. I’m heading up our field investigation.” Lawson had long, thin hands that she folded in front of her as she spoke. Her fingers were devoid of any jewelry, save a gold ring with a black stone that also carried an FBI crest. I guessed cuff links didn’t work for her.

  “Did you, by any chance, recognize the man in the alley?” Lawson said.

  “He was wearing a ski mask,” I said. “It’s in my statement.”

  “Voice?”

  I shook my head. “Sounded young. Plenty strong and looked to be in good shape.”

  Lawson glanced down at her notes. “He asked if you were ready to die?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Any idea why he said that?”

  I shrugged. “I assume he was just making conversation.”

  Lawson caught her boss’s eye. Rudolph seemed to be watching the exchange closely, but kept quiet.

  “And why would you assume that?”

  The last question came from a black man with white tufts of hair planted on either side of his head and a trim white goatee. He was sitting at the far end of the table, his chair turned to face the nearest wall.

  “This is Dr. James Supple,” Lawson said. “He works with our Profiling Section out of Quantico.”

  I nodded, but Supple continued to study the wall. Fuck him. Fuck profilers.

  “He didn’t pull the trigger,” I said. “What else should I assume?”

  Supple turned a fraction in his chair. A smile licked at the corner of his lips. “So the suspect was playing with you?”

  “You mean suspects,” I said.

  Supple sat up a bit. “Excuse me?”

  “Suspects,” I said. “There were two suspects in that alley. Not at the same time, but they were there.”

  I went on to explain the theory Rodriguez and I had worked out.

  Supple shook his head and glanced at Rudolph. “Doubtful.”

  “Why?” the deputy director said.

  “A killer like this
almost always operates alone.” Supple plucked his glasses off his nose and wiped them down as he spoke. “I know, everyone cites the DC sniper. But that was a unique set of facts. A man and a boy. Student and teacher. The exception, rather than the rule. I can tell you, without any doubt, this suspect almost certainly works without an accomplice.”

  If they hadn’t taken my gun at the door, I would have considered shooting the profiler where he sat. Instead, I took a sip of bad coffee and worked on summoning my reflective self.

  “The phone call you took, Mr. Kelly. About how long did it last?” That was Agent Lawson, dutifully picking up the ball and trying to move it forward.

  “Less than a minute.”

  “And the voice on the phone, was it the same as the voice in the alley?”

  “The voice on the phone was disguised. Electronically altered. Must have had some sort of device tapped onto the line.”

  “And why would he do that, do you suspect?” Supple was back again, laying out his piece of cheese and waiting to pounce. Fuck it. Let him pounce.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Why?”

  “You had heard his voice once in the alley, and he wanted to make sure you didn’t hear it a second time, especially if there was a possibility you might record it.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “That supports your theory of a single shooter?”

  “The facts speak for themselves, Mr. Kelly.”

  “Really? Because it seems to me if he’d let me hear his voice in the alley, why would he go to the trouble of disguising it the second time around? And why would he think my cell would be set up to record a call I had no reason to suspect I was even receiving?”

  Lawson intervened again. “What’s your point, Mr. Kelly?”

  “My point is pretty simple. This guy disguised his voice because he was afraid I might recognize it. Not from this morning, but from some other time.”

  “So you think this is someone you know?” Lawson said.

  “Like I said, we have two people working together here. The one I met in the alley and had never come into contact with before. And the second, the one who disguised his voice and called me out by name. Even referenced my background in the classics.”

  Lawson consulted her notes again. “You mean his mention of Homer?”

  “That’s right.”

  Supple was shaking his head slowly and chuckling. “Mr. Kelly doesn’t understand the pathology of the crime. He suspects himself to be the focus of our killer’s attention when, in fact, he’s a smoke screen. Our killer does a little research into his background. Easy enough to obtain. Then he plays on the private investigator’s ego, draws him into the case to distract us. Meanwhile, the actual target, as we all can see from today’s events, is much bigger. The intent, far more subtle.”

  I was reconsidering the many different ways to render my profiler friend unconscious when the deputy director cleared his throat at the end of the table. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, people. It’s still a bit early in the game to be drawing too many conclusions. Agent Lawson, anything else?”

  Lawson took the hint and shrugged. “I think we’re good for now.”

  Rudolph stood up and extended his hand. “Mr. Kelly, thanks for helping out. If you could give us a few moments?”

  And then I was gone, out of the inner circle, armed with a new appreciation for why people consider a life of crime to be such a lucrative career choice.

  CHAPTER 10

  The feds stuck me in another small room, this time with a pot of cold coffee and a door that was locked. Every ten minutes, a sallow-faced woman would check to see if I had accomplished anything worthwhile—like, perhaps, hanging myself. No such luck. After two more hours of nothing, Rodriguez walked in.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “So soon?”

  The detective grimaced and handed me my coat. We didn’t say much more until we had cleared the building and were safely in his car.

  “They’re not happy.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” I said.

  “They can’t get a handle on any pattern to the shootings. And they definitely don’t like the fact that he called you.”

  “And then there’s all those dead people.”

  Rodriguez ignored me. “They’re thinking of giving you a new cell phone, one with your old number. If this guy calls again, they’d be able to trace it. By the way, Rudolph’s worried you might go to the press.”

  “Rudolph’s a fucking moron. Not as much of a moron as that profiler, but he’s still awfully dumb.”

  “Yeah, well, the good news is Lawson thought you’d keep your mouth shut, and that seemed to carry a lot of weight. Still, it’s the Bureau. They don’t trust anyone. Especially, anyone inside.”

  “Who said I was inside?”

  “You’re not. So that’s another point in your favor. At least, it was.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Rodriguez sighed and spun the wheel. His car scraped onto Halsted Street and accelerated. “Rudolph decided the Bureau doesn’t want to be on the hook alone in case they don’t catch this guy.”

  “Let me guess, a task force?”

  “Just got off the phone with the mayor and my boss. Local, state, and federal. Lawson is running point.”

  “Bet the mayor loved that.”

  “I’m the scapegoat for the city.”

  “Even better.”

  “Fuck you, Kelly. At the end of the call, Lawson pipes in that she might want you attached to the investigation.”

  “As what?”

  Rodriguez pulled his car to the curb in front of a fire hydrant at the corner of Halsted and Adams.

  “That’s what the mayor wanted to know. Come on, let’s go.”

  Rodriguez popped out of the car and walked across the street. We were in the heart of Greektown, home away from home for out-of-town businessmen looking for a shot of ouzo, a leg of lamb, or a wayward belly dancer.

  We ducked our heads inside a restaurant called Santorini. The bar was warm and filled with dark men in starched white shirts with nothing to do. Rodriguez flipped open his badge. The bartender smiled and nodded toward a set of stairs. Rodriguez turned to me.

  “He’s at a table upstairs, Kelly.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think? And don’t be an asshole.”

  I WALKED UP two flights alone and surfaced in a dining room that was as large as it was empty. A burst of sizzle and flame flared to my left. Two small Greek men danced around a table, clapping their hands and crying “Oopah” while a third worked on containing the small inferno he’d created. In the midst of it all, Mayor John J. Wilson sat and scowled. The dish was called saganaki, essentially a piece of cheese doused in booze and set on fire. Wilson had a forkful halfway to his mouth as I approached. The mayor waved me to an empty chair.

  “You like this shit, Kelly?”

  I shrugged. “It’s fried cheese. What’s not to like?”

  “Give him a piece,” Wilson said. The waiter smiled and set another hunk of cheese on fire. After I had my portion, Wilson gave the boys a look, and they disappeared downstairs. We were alone. Just me, the mayor, and our saganaki.

  “Feds busting your balls, Kelly?”

  “A little bit, yeah.”

  The mayor pointed his fork my way. “How the fuck is it you’re in the middle of this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Coincidence, huh?”

  I shrugged. “Could be.”

  “You’re a liar.” Wilson cut off another piece of his appetizer and smiled as he chewed. “But that’s okay. Everyone lies.”

  “You think so?”

  “Sure. In a way, all the bullshit lies restore my faith in human nature.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “For what it’s worth, the feds are trying hard to believe you. The female agent, what’s her name?”

  “Lawson. Katherine Lawson.”

  “Right, Lawson. She t
hinks you have a connection. But she’s not sure what it is. Anyway, she wants to keep you close. Keep an eye on you. You gonna eat the rest of that?”

  I shook my head. The mayor shoveled my saganaki onto his empty plate and continued talking.

  “I come here two, three times a week. Sometimes for lunch. Sometimes just to get the fuck away. Listen to these crazy bastards run around, yell ‘Oopah,’ and all that shit. Glass of wine. Good fish here. You like fish?”

  “Sure.”

  “Me, too. This is a steak town and I love it. But a good piece of fish is tough to beat. Anyway, the Bureau wants you around, but they don’t want you in their way.”

  “I’m sure you can understand why.”

  “I certainly can. You’re an asshole. Simple as that. Don’t give a fuck who you fuck. Or why. Can’t be reasoned with, et cetera, et cetera. Don’t get me started. I already got some indigestion working. You want dinner?”

  “No thanks, Your Honor.”

  “Yeah, I don’t really feel like eating with you, either. So, here it is. The feds are going to use you as their personal piss boy. And you’re not going to like that. Not one bit. Am I right?”

  “When you put it that way …”

  “Meanwhile, I got some asshole shooting people on the CTA. No rhyme. No reason. Just for the hell of it. And where the fuck does that stop?”

  As he spoke, a flush of crimson rose in the mayor’s cheeks, a darker thread of purple pooling in the cracks of his fractured complexion.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Me neither.” The mayor gestured around the empty dining room. “Look at this place. Two nights ago I was in here, and the joint was packed. A week from now, who knows? People get afraid to come out of their house.”

  “Or their hotel room.”

  “Exactly. You know how much tourist money this kind of thing could cost us?” Wilson took a sip of water and cracked hard on the ice in his mouth.

  “What do you want from me, Mr. Mayor?”

  Wilson chewed up his ice and swung his head around the empty room. “Stand up for a second.”