Chapter 18

Grabbing my suitcase from the luggage carousal, I headed towards the wall of name-card waving chauffeurs that stood between me and the Chicago afternoon, like a flock of literate penguins. Halfway to the sliding-glass doors, I felt the fleshy buzz of my cell phone telling my leg to tell my brain that I had a text. On the screen was a photo of a young woman standing next to a black Audi S7. In the background was the building I was about to exit. I smiled and gave an extra point to the law firm representing the Prendergast’s interests in the Midwest.

Holding the key fob in her open palm, a woman of grad-school demeanor and a runway-model’s body, smiled seriously at me, “Mr. Langford said you’d prefer the S7.” Underneath the key was a business card embossed with, ‘Kristopek, Connelly and O’Shayan, LLP’ and a phone number.

“Thank you. I’m staying at the Viceroy…”

My most effective smile bounced off her dark hair as she turned towards the sidewalk, her voice trailing over her shoulder like a feather boa, “If you would, text us the location when you no longer require the transportation.”

She got in the front passenger side of a car idling just behind mine. She appeared to be laughing at something the young man behind the wheel must have said.

I decided to pay a visit to Kristopek, Connelly and O’Shayan before going to my hotel. Coming as no surprise whatsoever, their address, 70 West Madison, was already entered into the navigation system.

After clearing the buses and cabs and family-filled SUVs around the terminal, I got in the left lane of the Kennedy Expressway and let the supercharged engine keep me out of harm’s way. Nothing in the detective manual says anything about avoiding fun while working.

Setting the cruise control, I thought about the previous afternoon. Inviting the new dancer at the Bottom of the Sea to join me was priority almost-one. Thing was, by the time I finished having Lou talk to me, she was no longer on the stage. The club’s hostess and manager seemed to be the shortest path to securing a travel partner. One look at Diane’s face told me I wouldn’t need to change my airline reservation. Not only was Diane not smiling, she looked really pissed off.

Too bad, she would have been fun to have on my arm as I introduced her to the Windy City.

*****

Zhao Annchi stepped to the sidewalk outside the terminal. She wore a black suit of a style more appropriate to a woman moving up the corporate ladder than one who dances in public, during business hours. It was designer-expensive and a shade of black that echoed of lingerie and mortal sin. Were it not for her dancer’s body and Asian-middle-European looks, one could be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at how loosely the suit was fitted. By some magic of custom tailoring, the jacket and slacks maintained their lines no matter what one put in the pockets. At the moment, that was a single cell phone. She had no luggage.

A remarkably nondescript sedan approached the edge of the sidewalk. Annchi opened the rear passenger door and was seated before it stopped moving. So it didn’t. There was no conversation inside the car. The driver found the Expressway and headed towards the city.

*****

Kyle Harrington was raised in the life of wealth and privilege common among the top 1%. From birth to the day he returned, un-announced, in the middle of his Fall semester at Radcliffe, every need was anticipated and met. Second-generation money, the Harrington family owned a double-digit percentage of the commercial space in the new skyscrapers that raised the horizon along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.

Kyle wanted more than anything to impress his family. He was intelligent to a fault. Unfortunately for him, given the nature of the family business, IQ came in a distant second to what Nietzsche would have called, ‘the will to power’.

***

Stepping into the South Chicago bar, Starr felt the gaze of the crowd pass over her like the illumination of a lighthouse on a foggy sea. Nothing about her was lost despite its seemingly uncaring touch. Her clothing, olive drab coat and shapeless-black watch cap on a less confident woman would have served to hide her Olympic quality self-confidence. That a flash of chalice-gold hair peeked out between knitted wool and patched-khaki at her shoulder, didn’t help.

Spotting her quarry at a table off to the right of a small stage, she moved with the graceful assurance of a person who was absent the day every child was taught to fear unknown people and strange environments. As she wove between the tables, she felt the scrutiny of the regular patrons. Dark reflections in the mirrored wall behind the tiered rows of bottles, un-moving yet alive, like Easter Island monoliths. She smiled at the slight rise of more than one shot glass as she passed.

Sitting down across from the young man, she lit a cigarette and, without preamble, said, “Seriously, this is your idea of the best place for a secret meeting? What, does your family own the bank that provided the mortgage to whatever Mob front company owns this dive?”

Kyle shrugged down into his Harris tweed jacket and looked around the artificially dark space.

Starr had a sudden memory from childhood, of a pet turtle. She tried and failed to remember the name she gave to it during the second of the three days it lasted. Looking at Kyle Harrington, she laughed loudly enough to cause the eyes reflected in the mirror behind the bar to shift their focus.

“Well, for my part, I managed to contact Maggie. Who, were she at this table with us,” for reasons lost on the young man, Starr laughed briefly before continuing, “would complete the entire membership of the Boston chapter of the Hermes Consortium. Still living.”

Kyle drew himself further down into his chair as the implications registered, “But she’ll help us, right? Maggie may have been been impulsive and given to the wild side, but she’s always been the smartest…”

As far back in his mind as Kyle was, he didn’t miss the change in the girl across the table. Her eyes stopped blessing the surrounding patrons with her good cheer and approval to focus solely on him.

“… one of the smartest.”

Starr smiled without consulting the rest of her beautiful face, ” She told me to come out here and meet up with you.”

Interrupting herself for a moment, she frowned at the ashtray in the center of the table, as if it were a defective crystal ball. “I’m not sure we can count on her help, though she said she had resources out here. Whatever the hell that means. You have any luck figuring out what’s on this?”

Starr held the silver thumb drive up to the anemic lights hiding in the dark ceiling.

“I could care less, as long as we get someone to pay us for it.” The young man’s voice betrayed the shaky truce between the passion in his eyes and the fear that hunched his shoulders like an overly tight shawl.