Michael Harvey - The Third Rail

I sat down opposite her on the bench. “There’s something else we should talk about first.”

“What’s that?” she said.

I took out my folder and placed it on top of the paperwork she had already spread out between us. She looked, but didn’t touch.

“Does this have to do with Doherty?” she said.

“Open it up and take a look.”

She flicked the edge of the file open. I kept talking.

“The top set of papers comes from 1978. Outlines the ownership structure for Transco and its holding company, CMT.”

Her eyes shimmered in the jaundiced light. “The company you think caused the old train accident?”

“Yeah.”

Lawson flipped through the documents and twisted her face into a smile. “Is this supposed to mean something to me?”

“I’m guessing you came across it when you worked the case on Father Mark. He was ripping off his parish, and someone made the mistake of giving you a look at the archdiocese’s books.”

“Everyone knows I worked that case, Michael.”

“What they didn’t know about was CMT Holding.”

Lawson didn’t say anything, but I could see the muscle in her jaw pumping like a piston.

“You know how much money the Chicago archdiocese takes in every year, Katherine? A little more than a bil ion dol ars. Cash money. Tax-free. Not even an IRS form to file. Nice work if you can get it.”

I waited, but Lawson just sat there, hands in her pockets, and listened.

“CMT was set up in the 1920s. It’s a tangled trail, but a lawyer named Bernstein provided me with a map. The seed money came from the archdiocese’s coffers. A greedy cardinal’s way to secretly invest in a little property, a few railroads. Make a little coin he didn’t have to share with the parishioners. CMT got bigger over time. Cardinals and bishops got greedier with each passing generation. Created a web of related businesses, subsidiaries like Transco. Then 1980 happened. The crash at Lake and Wabash and eleven people dead. Blood the men in col ars needed to get clean of. So they divested themselves of everything, dissolved CMT, and walked-no, ran-away and hid. Then you came along.”

Final y, something had caught her interest, and Lawson stirred. “Excuse me?”

Among other things, the Honorable John J. Wilson keeps a man named Walter Sopak on his personal payrol. Sopak is what’s known as a forensic accountant-a guy who knows how to hide your money and how to find out where someone else’s is hidden. I’ve never met the man. Wilson made sure of that. But I pul ed Sopak’s report on Katherine Lawson from the folder.

“You make a little over a hundred thousand a year, Katherine. Your parents are dead. They left you a nice set of teeth and a pile of debt. Stil…” I tapped Sopak’s report. “There’s the condo in Sante Fe and a timeshare in Italy. Hidden pretty wel, but there they are. And then there’s the money that goes offshore and just disappears. Even the guy who put this report together wasn’t sure he found it al, but he made a pretty good guess.”

“Guess at what, Michael?”

“He figures you’re good for maybe one to two mil ion a year, minimum, from whoever keeps the church’s secrets. Maybe seven to ten mil ion total over the last five years.”

“You’re crazy,” she said.

“Am I?”

“Either that or you need a long vacation.”

I pul ed out the unregistered. 38 Rodriguez had given me to use on Doherty. “You got a gun, Katherine?”

She ran her eyes to the tracks behind me and back. “I have my service weapon, Michael.” She showed me the Glock on her hip.

“Stand up, take it out, and put it on the ground.”

She did.

A solitary figure stepped out of the black and walked along the tracks, a thin pistol in his right hand. There was no sound, save his own languid footsteps and the rats, scratching against the darkness. The man moved closer to the wal and stopped. He’d tracked the woman here, then waited. He’d heard the voices, but couldn’t make out any words. Then, the gunshot. Maybe someone had done the man a favor. Now he’d find out. Just ahead, he saw a shal ow pool of white floating against the black. The man crept closer and clicked on his flashlight. She was crumpled in a corner, eyes closed, breathing even. Her left hand was cuffed to a locker, and she’d taken a bul et in the leg. The man crouched down to take a closer look. Flesh wound. Hardly this woman’s biggest problem. He glanced at the scatter of paperwork on the floor, but didn’t bother with any of it. He hadn’t been told to read anything. Hadn’t been told to col ect anything. And the man did what he was told. He compared the woman’s face with the picture they’d given him. Then he stood up, raised his pistol, and fired twice. Two tiny pops. Two smal holes. He checked the woman again. Satisfied, the man slipped the pistol into his coat and pul ed the gray cashmere close around him. Then he turned and walked away, his left foot dragging behind him. The man hated rats and could feel them as he walked, staring out at him from the darkness.

The cal came at eight the next morning. I was up on Rachel’s floor by eight-fifteen. Hazel was not there to greet me. Instead, it was a sad-eyed doctor named John Sokul. He slid a summary of Rachel’s injuries in front of me.

“Just so you know what we’ve been dealing with, Mr. Kel y.”

I scanned the sheet. A fractured skul, two cracked ribs, fractured col arbone, fingers, and cheek.

“As you know, there were two assailants,” the doctor said. “According to Rachel, they hit her with a brick so she was at least partial y unconscious during the attack. There was no sexual assault, but, of course, this was a brutal attack. We’ve kept her under mild sedation due to the extensive physical injuries, but also to ease the mental and emotional trauma she’s suffered.”

“And now?”

“And now she needs to reenter the world. Or at least start the process. She’s been mostly withdrawn, which is not unusual. She answers our questions and takes al her medication, but she doesn’t offer anything on her own. She doesn’t react wel to most physical contact and typical y wil not al ow any male member of our staff to touch her at al.”

“What does she do al day?”

“Most of the time, she just sits in our common room and looks out the window. And she holds that dog you brought, Maggie. She holds that dog al day.”

Rachel was sitting with her back to the door, by a window overlooking the lake. She had a splint on one hand and the pup cradled in both arms. I approached quietly. She turned as I sat down beside her. One side of her face was swol en with bruises, and her left eye was stil partial y shut. There were stitches holding together her lower lip, and one cheek was covered by a bandage. Maggie wagged her tail and squirmed in Rachel’s arms. She let the pup go, and I picked her up. The pup licked my face.

“She misses you.”

“Yeah.” I put the dog down. She scrambled across to Rachel, who gathered her up again.

“How you doing?” I said.

Rachel scratched the dog’s ears and turned back to the lake. “My face hurts. I feel like I’m about a hundred and I got viciously attacked by some fucking animals. That doesn’t include the quality time I spent with your friend Jim.”

I reached out to touch her sleeve.

“Don’t.” I thought she might push me away, but she just hugged the pup, who buried her head under Rachel’s arm.

“You know al the work I do with the Rape Volunteer Association?” she said.

The association was a support group for women who’d been assaulted. I’d met Rachel at its annual fund-raiser.

“Sure.”