Michael Harvey - The Third Rail

“Sorry,” I said. “How long do you think she’l be?”

The apology seemed to buy me some rope. Jaime even smiled as Rachel sat up.

“Actual y, we’re just about done.” The doc turned to her patient. “Your X-rays show no damage and it doesn’t look like you sustained any sort of concussion. The cut on your head isn’t deep enough for stitches, so we’l just stick with the butterflies. You stil have a headache?”

Rachel shrugged. “It’s getting better.”

Jaime took out a pad of paper and began to scribble. “I’m going to give you something for the pain. Then maybe Lancelot here can give you a ride home.”

Jaime and Rachel looked at me and laughed. I didn’t get it, but that didn’t seem to matter. Then Jaime was gone. And we were alone.

“You okay?” I said.

“A little sore, a little light-headed, but I’m fine. What are you doing down here?”

I shrugged. “Came to get you.”

She sighed and held out her arms. I pul ed her close.

“What happened at the lakefront?” she said.

“We can talk about it later.”

Rachel nodded into my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Rach.”

She looked up. “For what?”

“This. What we talked about this morning. Everything.”

She shook her head. “This wasn’t what I was talking about. What happened to me today could have happened to anyone. In fact, it did happen to a whole bunch of other people. Except much worse. And none of them even knew you.”

She was right, but that didn’t touch the hol ow inside, the fear that flared every time I saw the emptiness in Katherine Lawson’s eyes and wondered when it might again be mine. I folded my arms around Rachel, trying to capture what lay between us, trying to keep it safe.

“I love you, Rach.”

She drew me down and kissed me hard. “You better, pal. Now take me home. Hospitals give me the creeps.”

We fil ed her prescription at the hospital pharmacy and caught a cab north. On the drive home, she tucked the top of her head against my cheek and immediately fel asleep. I sat quietly, listening to the cabbie talk on his cel and watching the headlights drift past.

Nelson sat in a jet-black Chevy, engine idling, watching the front door to the graystone. He’d dumped the rifle he used to kil Robles in Lake Michigan. Then he’d slipped onto Lake Shore Drive, where he’d mingled with the bewildered, the bloody, and the freshly dead before disappearing into the neighborhood.

Now he pul ed a long knife from a towel on his lap. His mind cast back to the day Robles told him about the black case and the lightbulbs. His dead friend had taken them because it was 1998 and it was just that easy. The army was giving him the shove, why not make them sweat a little? Robles didn’t know exactly what the bulbs contained, just that he’d been given the job of guarding them, four hours a day, for three months inside a bioweapons lab at Maryland’s Fort Detrick. That was enough for Nelson. He took the case from his friend. Then he did some digging, and turned up

“Terror 2000.”

Issued in 1998, the Pentagon’s classified report outlined potential terrorist threats to the United States. Prominent among them was something cal ed the “subway scenario”: an attack involving the introduction of lightbulbs fil ed with weaponized anthrax into a major urban subway system. The Pentagon was so concerned about such an attack, it authorized the lab at Fort Detrick to conduct experiments on its feasibility. The testing went on for five years, from 1993 through ’97. According to “Terror 2000,” some scientists loaded their lightbulbs with anthrax that had been genetical y modified to be harmless. Others, however, insisted on the real thing for their tests. Nelson wasn’t sure which brand of bulb his friend had lifted from the lab. He was rooting for the latter, but didn’t real y give a fuck. The lightbulbs were in place. When they fel, they fel. And Chicago would learn to live with the consequences.

Meanwhile, there were choices to be made and smal er, more personal bits of pain to inflict. A green and white Checker pul ed up to the graystone. There were two people in the back, but only one got out. It was Kel y’s judge. She had a bandage on her head and kept her gaze to the ground as she disappeared into her building. Nelson waited for the cab to pul away. Then he slipped the knife under his jacket, eased out of the car, and walked toward her front door.

I directed the cab north. Rachel had invited me to stay at her place, but I knew the day would hit hard once she got inside. So I told her to sleep in and cal me tomorrow. I needed some sleep myself. And my dog could use some dinner. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, a nightcap seemed like it might make everything go down a whole lot easier.

I slipped in the door of the Hidden Shamrock at a little before nine, pushed past a knot of people, and headed to the back room. There was a scattering of patrons at some tables and four or five more lounging on soft couches arranged around a fireplace that looked like a living room. I skipped al of that and headed for the bar. If I’m going to drink, I want to sit on a straight-backed chair with a row of heads on either side. If I want to sit on a soft couch, I go home. That’s where soft couches belong.

A bartender I didn’t recognize floated over and skidded a beer mat my way. “What wil it be there, partner?”

He was an Irishman. That much I knew straight off. His hair was spiked blond with silver tips. He had a lightning bolt tattooed on his hand and danced a bit in his shoes as he stood.

“Give me a Booker’s neat,” I said.

“Booker’s neat, over.” He turned, grabbed a glass, and spun back to the bar. “So what’s shaking there, sir? Out for a little, you know?”

Large blue eyes rimmed in red rol ed to the left, toward a couple of women perched at the end of the bar.

“I know those two. Mama.” He gave out a hoo-haw like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, dropped some whiskey into the glass, and pushed it my way. “If you want to be getting the ride, there’s the ticket, boyo.”

I took a sip and watched myself age in a bar mirror. The Irishman, apparently, required no response and kept talking.

“Name’s Des. The right honorable Desmond Walsh.”

I passed along my vitals.

“They’re al talking about that shit this afternoon,” Des said, lifting a foot and planting it alongside the speed rack.

“Lake Shore Drive?”

He nodded. “Couple of firemen came in. Told us it was an awful fucking wreck.”

I sat some more with my drink.

“Heard they kil ed the cunt,” Des said.

“Real y?”

“Coppers blew the fucker’s head off. Too good for him, you ask me.”

“How do you know they got him?”

Des nodded toward a bank of TVs showing the Bul s game. “Mayor’s gonna be on tonight. Give us the old play-by-play.”

“Thank God for Mayor Wilson, hey?”

“Thank God for them coppers. That boy was never gonna see the inside of a cel. Not in this town.”

A waitress beckoned and Des wiggled his way back down the bar. The Irishman was right. Chicago wanted some blood spil ed and they didn’t want to wait. Wilson understood that. So did Lawson. So did the media. They’d give people their dog-and-pony show and a head to stick on a pike. If I didn’t want to partake, that was fine. But the show would go on.

I took another sip of whiskey and again considered the merits of the bar mirror on the wal. On one side of it was a charcoal sketch of Brendan Behan and an il ustration of an Irish patriot I didn’t recognize getting his neck stretched by the British. On the other side was a Blues Brothers poster and what looked like an old railway schedule in a cheap brown frame.