Marcus Sakey - The Blade Itself

“Karen?” The detective’s voice was level and calm, his eyes lasers on hers. “What’s Danny up to?”

She stared at him, wondering the same thing, the last weeks coming into focus. The late nights. Danny’s distraction, feeble excuses, and in ability to discuss anything. Last night’s promise that it would all be over soon. That suggested a task, a goal. A specific job to complete. All the things the detective wanted to hear, wanted to know. The detective with his South Side patter and easy smile hiding the knife he used to shred their world.

Fuck him.

“I’m sorry.” She slid out of the booth, her purse trailing behind. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I can’t help you.”

The move startled him, and she used the momentum to escape, let it block out his voice, his last question, the one that in the movies would have stopped her in her tracks, but in real life she didn’t even hear. She stepped past the hostess and out to the open air and noise of Belmont. The sunlight startled her. A cab honked as it went by, but she shook her head and began walking.

In the whole of her years with Danny, she’d made only one unretractable promise. It was after going to court for him, listening to a nasal prosecutor in a brown suit explain that in the photographs the jury was examining, the bloody boot marks on the body indicated where the victim had been kicked after he’d been shot. She’d only met Evan once before then, but she knew how much he had meant to Danny, and she watched him, wanting to see some remorse, some regret. It wouldn’t undo what he had done, but it would put it on a level she might understand. But Evan had looked perfectly at ease, his calm unruffled.

It had made her want to vomit.

She’d sat like a statue, teeth clenched, through the whole trial. Then she’d come home and made her one and only ultimatum to Danny.

If he ever backslid, ever fell back into the life, she was out of there.

Gone.

Even having been here before and lacking the time now to appreciate it, even with a federal crime on his conscience and a detective on his trail, even with his girlfriend furious and his life upside down, Danny couldn’t help but find Union Station’s Great Hall breathtaking. Pillars lined the mammoth room, gracefully vaulting upward to support Beaux Arts alcoves and balconies. Eighty feet above, the domed glass ceiling cut the twilight sky into neat blue-gray geometries. The room had the echoing quiet of a church. The benches dotting the floor even looked like pews, though instead of a gathering of the faithful, the benches held a congregation of the unwanted, men and women with a pallor of dirt that couldn’t be washed away by a thousand showers, whose hacking coughs and newspaper shuffles bounced incongruously around the airy space.

Danny walked down the marble steps, conscious of the bored watchfulness of the homeless. The Great Hall was out of the question for his purposes. He nodded briefly at a staring old man with a scraggly beard. The guy didn’t acknowledge him, just swiveled his head to trace Danny’s path across the floor. Hallways led in several directions, and he went left at random, following a gentle ramp into a more modern section, all fluorescent lighting and corporate plants.

As he wandered, he found himself thinking about last night. Dinner with Karen. He’d rarely seen her so mad, the anger simmering just beneath the surface. She obviously knew something was going on. When she’d asked if it was her fault, something she’d done, he’d almost told her everything. Almost spilled the whole foul mess out to steam on the table between them. But the quiet voice inside had whispered, Steady on . Told him that he was nearly safe. That this would all be over in a few more days, and then he could devote all his energy to making it right with her.

He’d spent his whole life listening to that little voice. Listening to it had saved his butt plenty of times. But he was starting to wonder if it was the best source of relationship advice.

Not to mention that in a few days I’ll have bankrupted my boss and cost forty men their livelihoods, all in commission of a felony that could land me in a backwoods super-max prison.

The thought put him in mind of Nolan, of the phone message that had shaken Karen up. Shit, shaken him up, more than he’d dared show.

“Danny, this is Detective Nolan. We need to talk. Some things have come up I want to ask you about. Call me. ASAP.”

What did that mean, things had come up? What things? His first thought was that Richard had panicked and gone to the police. But he couldn’t figure a way that made sense. After all, Richard shouldn’t have been able to connect the crime to Danny. And if he somehow could, then Nolan wouldn’t be calling his house – he’d be waiting outside it with two squad cars as backup.

Danny took an escalator up one level to the ground floor and found himself between a newsstand and a McDonald’s. Glassy-eyed commuters milled in all directions. Definitely a no-go. He stepped off the up escalator, turned, and hopped on the down. Glass doors ran across the opposite wall, with signs pointing to Metra trains, Amtrak trains, more food and convenience stores blocked by throngs of people. It was five o’clock, rush hour, a good bit earlier than they would be working. But that was the point. Better to scope it out at its worst. If he could find the right spot under these circumstances, then he’d have confidence for tomorrow.

Even if Nolan’s call didn’t have anything to do with Evan, with what they were doing, he wasn’t sure he wanted to call the detective back. He didn’t need another factor confusing things. It was complicated enough trying to stay a step ahead of Evan and ensure that everybody got through this disaster unscarred.

Except Richard and every honest man that works for him. Every man just like Dad.

In the movies, ransom exchanges always went down in a parking deck, or out in the country somewhere. Two cars parked thirty yards apart, pleas to see the hostage, brusque orders to show the money. But he’d seen the way Evan acted in a private space. He’d pulled a gun on a startled twelve-year-old – how could he be trusted to keep cool faced with a murderously angry father holding a million in cash?

Hence Danny’s current errand. He needed a place that was public enough that even Evan couldn’t shoot anybody, yet private enough they could do the exchange. And it had to offer enough escape routes that they wouldn’t accidentally find themselves gridlocked on the Dan Ryan next to Richard and Tommy. They needed street exits, multiple levels, cabs, trains, and lots of people. The best place to hide a needle was in a needlestack.

All of which added up to Union Station.

It took him another hour of wandering and watching. At first he liked a quiet hallway off the beaten path, but a sudden crowd debarking a train blew that one. Finally, he came on a dull antechamber at the top of a stopped escalator. An abandoned gift shop flanked one side. The other connected to an adjacent office building. In the twenty minutes he waited, only one person came through, a harried-looking guy in a blue suit, who rushed from the office building, letting the door slam behind him. By ten tomorrow, the office would be cleared out – the odds of anyone coming through weren’t nil, but they were acceptably slim, and wildly preferable to anywhere that might give Evan the privacy to go kill-crazy.

The only problem he could think of was how to conceal their identities. He didn’t dare leave the exchange to Evan, and of course he couldn’t walk up to Richard himself. But then, you could hardly wander around Union Station in a mask, could you?