Dan O'Shea - Penance

Cubs home opener today. Usually that meant forty-five degrees and rain, but today the weather was a postulate for the existence of a benevolent God. Johnson’s bosses at the Tribune had given her two tickets to the corporate field boxes, first row behind the Cubs’ on-deck circle. But Johnson was flying back to New York for another TV thing, so Lynch had a ticket to burn.

He pulled out his cell, called Dickey Regan.

“Still owe you lunch, Dickey. How about a dog and a beer?”

“Dog and a beer? You cheap bastard. Jesus, I would have dropped trou for you, you told me you were gonna serve up the president and the mayor.”

“Nobody wants to look at your pasty white ass, Dickey.”

“Sure. Johnson’s off to do the New York circuit again. I gotta dust my Pulitzer just to keep my self-esteem up.”

“Listen, the dog and the beer? That’s in the Trib ’s field boxes for the opener. You can even wear your Sun-Times cap, stick it in their eye.”

Regan laughed. “OK, Lynch. Give me twenty to put my ‘Hurley-gets-his’ column to bed, then pick me up out front.”

Lynch hung up, dropped the cell on the seat, decided to take a spin around Grant Park while he waited for Regan, wondering would Hurley slip out of this somehow. What he had on tape, it would muddy him up, but it might not take him down. Lynch decided it didn’t matter.

Done his part, done his best.

Ferguson sat in the new InterGov offices, watching CNN. Of course, Ferguson wasn’t Ferguson anymore, and InterGov wasn’t InterGov.

Nice day in San Francisco, nice view of the Bay from the Embarcadero Center. Emerging Market Investments was the name on the door. That had been the transition plan for a while — get out of the government contracting business. Too many ties someone might run down. Take their seed money, move it into the private equity/hedge fund space. More than enough inside knowledge to make most of the right calls. With a focus on business opportunities in the Middle East, China, India, the Pacific Rim, even Africa, they had built-in cover, could get teams wherever they needed them. And everybody on board was going to get filthy stinking rich.

Ferguson needed to get some people into a couple of places right now. Big spike in traffic on a lot of the nets the various three-letter pukes were monitoring, the Al-Qaeda types thinking this was their big chance to kick the Great Satan while he was down. Really, that just meant they were sticking their heads up out of their rat holes for a change. Target-rich environment. Ferguson had to go. Had a flight down to San Diego to brief a SEAL team on a little exercise in Malaysia.

Ferguson was about to click off the TV when the Hurley story broke. Son of a bitch. The Boy Scout had not only saved the girl, he’d gotten Hurley, too, or dinged him good at least. Ferguson smiled. His boy Lynch had game — even made that punk Hurley hang a medal on him before Lynch stuck the knife in. He clicked off the set, grabbed his go bag by the door, stuck his head into the next office.

“Wheels up in twenty, Chen.”