Ms. Simon Says (3 page)

Send who in? Shelby wondered. Then she watched in horror as the felon, the perp, the possible letter bomber and probable serial killer in the duct-taped vest levered off the edge of Doris’s desk and walked the short distance to Hal’s glass door.

And then opened it!

Hal immediately rose from his chair, hopefully to defend her, to throw his bulk between Shelby and certain death, but instead he said quite cheerfully, “Come on in. Glad to see you.”

Shelby decided it was a conspiracy. Her life—all thirty-four glorious and too few years of it—flashed before her eyes, then came to an abrupt halt when Hal announced, “Ms. Shelby Simon, meet Lieutenant Mick Callahan.”

CHAPTER TWO

M
ick Callahan wished he were anywhere in the world but where he was at the moment. Anywhere. Stretched out in the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway. Parachuting into Afghanistan. At the North Pole in his BVDs. Hell.

Still, it probably wasn’t much worse being here at the
Daily Mirror
than half an hour ago when he’d walked into his captain’s office, after being summoned on his pager.

Captain Rita Bruzzi hadn’t even said “Good morning.” She’d looked up from the open file on her desk and said, “How are those anger management classes going, Lieutenant?”

There wasn’t much sense lying since she was looking at his damned personnel jacket. “I’m having a hard time fitting them into my schedule,” he said.

“Right.” She sighed deep within her ample, Wagnerian chest and closed the file, then clasped her hands on top of it almost as if she were praying. “Headquarters has a special assignment for you. Starting today.”

“Yeah, but I...”

Those prayerful hands flew up in a gesture demanding silence. “Maybe you didn’t hear me, Callahan. I said
Headquarters
has a special assignment for you. Now sit your rogue ass down in that chair”—she stabbed a finger across her desktop—“and keep your legendary anger managed and your mouth shut while I tell you what you’re going to do.
Capisce?
”

Rogue ass? He almost laughed. Then he was tempted to say, “Rita, you’re beautiful when you’re mad,” because she truly was, but the captain was wearing her service revolver, so Mick kept his mouth shut and lowered himself into the designated chair.

She briefed him on the letter bombs, the tight relationship—as in I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine— between city government and the Helm-Harris Syndicate, and the reason why he was going to comply with this order. Namely because he’d find himself behind a desk for the next six months if he didn’t.

“I’ve got a lot going down on the street right now,” he said.

“It’ll all still be here when you get back.”

Hell. How could he argue with that?

But that didn’t mean he had to be happy about babysitting some idiot columnist who’d obviously offended some whack job. And now that he noticed, the idiot columnist didn’t look all that happy about it either.

Ms. Simon was even better-looking than her picture. Of course, most of the ones he saw on buses in the Eleventh District had a blacked-out front tooth or a mustache, and instead of saying “Read the
Daily Mirror
” Ms. Simon usually said “Fuck you.”

Not unlike her expression at the moment.

Stabler, on the other hand, seemed delighted to see him, no doubt because Ms. Shelby Simon would soon be Mick’s problem instead of his.

“Well,” the newspaperman said, “what happens now?” “The sooner we leave the building, the better,” Mick answered. He turned to his assignee. “Anything you need to get before we go? You probably won’t be back here for a while.”

He reached out to take her arm, but she pulled away and turned to her boss, hissing. “Isn’t this just a little excessive, Hal, for heaven’s sake?”

“I don’t think you appreciate the kind of danger you’re in, Shelby,” he said. “And what’s more, I don’t think I should have to point out the risk you pose to your colleagues by your very presence. Isn’t that right, Lieutenant?”

“That’s right.” Mick reached out for her arm again, this time grasping it with more authority than before. “Let’s go, Ms. Simon.”

Five minutes later, in her corner office on the eighth floor, Shelby opened the center drawer of her desk, glared at the contents, then slammed it closed. She repeated the process with the three drawers on the left and the three on the right.

Her office was a mess after the bomb people and their dogs had searched it. Several file drawers gaped open. The trash basket had been overturned, and the usual foot-high stack of incoming mail on her credenza was nowhere in sight.

“If there’s nothing here you need, let’s get going,” the formerly nefarious guy said. He was leaning in her doorway, no doubt anticipating an escape attempt on her part.

She’d whisked past him through Hal’s glass door, then ignored him in the elevator and pretended he didn’t exist as he followed her along the corridor that led to her office. And she ignored him now, which probably wasn’t fair since this mess wasn’t his fault, but she needed a target for her anger, dammit, and Lieutenant Mick Callahan just happened to be the nearest one.

It wasn’t anger so much as fear that she felt, Shelby acknowledged. But on second thought, she wasn’t really afraid. There just hadn’t been time to comprehend the situation or to consider these letter bombs as a personal threat. They still felt more like breaking news, something happening someplace else—in Buffalo and Hartford— happening to someone else, certainly not to her. And the only really scary person she’d seen all morning had turned out to be her very own bodyguard, compliments of the Chicago PD.

She felt off balance, at odds with reality. Maybe her column had been canceled for her own good, but Shelby felt as if she’d been fired. Out of sheer frustration, she slammed her desk drawer again. Harder.

“Hey, I don’t like this any more than you do, lady. Okay?” the lieutenant said from the doorway. “Just get whatever you need and let’s go.”

“I don’t know what I need. I can’t think,” she replied, sounding childish now and almost as helpless as she felt.

“Handbag?” he suggested. “Laptop?” He shoved off the door frame and sauntered toward her desk. “Date-book?”

She stared at him a second. Son of a gun. Those were the exact items she needed. “What do you do?” she asked him. “A mind-reading act in a nightclub in your off-duty hours?”

He smiled for the very first time. All the worry lines in his face disappeared, and that hard, almost cruel mouth gave way to a brief but exquisite grin. “Something like that,” he said. “Is this your laptop?” He pointed to the black leather case on her desktop.

“That’s it.”

“Okay.”

He hiked the strap up his arm and settled it over his shoulder while Shelby gathered up her handbag and planner.

“Where’s your car?” he asked.

“I don’t have one. I take the bus or the El.”

“Well, that’s one less thing to worry about. Come on. I’m parked down in front.”

Indeed he was. His ancient dark green, fastback Mus-tang was parked directly in front of the
Daily Mirror
building in a No Parking zone with a young patrolman standing guard nearby.

“Hey, Lieutenant,” the kid cop said with a wave of his hand. “You ever want to get rid of this mean green machine, just give me a call, okay?”

“Will do,” Callahan said as he opened the passenger door, then promptly swore under his breath and began pitching junk from the front seat into the back.

Coffee cups and lids. Big Mac boxes. Water bottles. A paperback book. A pair of jeans.

Shelby stood behind him, clucking her tongue at the incredible mess and doing her best not to ogle his very nice backside where a small frayed hole near the bottom of a pocket revealed that the lieutenant was wearing purple briefs.

“I wasn’t expecting company,” he muttered over his shoulder.

“Yeah, I can tell. I wasn’t expecting to
be
company.” He was down to seat leather now, picking up loose change and paper clips, plastic spoons and a few AA batteries.

“There.” He straightened up and gestured for Shelby to get in.

But she didn’t.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Wait just a minute.” Suddenly she wasn’t quite so sure she wanted to go along with this bodyguard thing. How many years had she been advising her readers to be cautious about strangers, particularly those in uniform.

She didn’t know this Mick Callahan from Adam. What’s more, if he was a cop, why didn’t he dress like one instead of looking like some ratty homeless guy? And what about those purple briefs? They certainly weren’t Chicago PD standard issue. She lifted her chin in defiance and demanded, “Do you have a badge or something? Some ID? I mean, how do I know who you really are?”

He rolled his eyes—which she just happened to notice were a stunning hazel, a bit more green than brown—and then jammed his hand into his pocket, producing a metal shield clipped to a small black leather case.

“There.” He held it in front of her face, but far too close for her to properly focus on. “Satisfied?”

“Not quite.” She rummaged in her handbag for her drugstore reading glasses, snapped them open, jammed them on her face, and then grabbed the badge. It looked real enough, so she handed it back. But she wasn’t done yet. “What about something with your picture on it?”

“Jesus, lady.” He ripped his fingers through his already rumpled hair. “Will you get in the goddamned car instead of standing out here like a target?”

“Oh.” Once more, she seemed to have forgotten that she was supposed to be afraid.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Oh. Just get in, will you, and then I’ll show you my whole frigging family album, if you want.”

“That won’t be necessary.” She angled into the now clean passenger seat and had barely tucked her right leg inside the vehicle when he slammed the door.

Callahan stalked around the front of the car, slid behind the steering wheel, and jabbed the key in the ignition. The Mustang roared to life, vibrating like a small jet. “We’ll stop by your place for a suitcase or whatever,” he said. “Where’s home?”

“The Canfield Towers on North State.”

“I should have guessed.” He rolled his eyes again. Shelby glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” He took the emergency brake off, wrenched the gearshift into first, and pulled away from the curb.

Steaming at his remark, Shelby crossed her arms and stared straight ahead. How rude was that? So she lived in a luxurious high-rise. So what? She didn’t have to apologize for that. She was proud of it. Ms. Simon worked damned hard for every single cent she made, and if she chose to spend an outrageous sum for rent, well then, by God she had every right to do just that.

“Where do you live, Callahan?” She snorted, not too attractively, as she turned her glare on him. “In a refrigerator box under the Green Line?”

He smiled again. This time, though, it was less of a grin that blazed across his face, and more like an involuntary, sideways twitch of his lips.

“Something like that,” he said.

Shifting around, Shelby perused the clutter in the backseat. He probably lived here, she thought. In his car. It smelled like burgers and fries and dirty socks. She wondered what kind of policeman he was, and she was just about to ask when he reached across to the glove compartment, grabbed a cell phone, and thumbed in a number.

“It’s Callahan,” he told whoever answered. “Put me through to the captain.” After a moment he said, “I’ve got her.”

Shelby assumed he meant her.

“We’re headed to her residence at the Canfield Towers. Yeah. Nope. I’ll let you know.” He clicked off, then stashed the phone in a side pocket of his down vest.

“You’ll let them know what?” she asked.

“Where you decide to relocate.”

“Oh, God.” She’d forgotten about that. It seemed as if he were just escorting her safely home. “I don’t see why I can’t just hang out in my apartment. It’s plenty safe. There’s a man on the door twenty-four/seven. I can order in groceries.”

“Forget it,” he said.

“I will not. Nobody asked me about this, you know. Just because my employers think it’s a good idea doesn’t mean—”

“Is that your building up there on the left?”

Shelby looked ahead, where the newly constructed luxury high-rise towered over the block. She’d been one of the first residents there and she loved her spacious one bedroom/one bath on the twelfth floor, even as she aspired to the three-bedroom penthouse on the thirtieth and thirty-first floors. Someday. If the column continued to be popular...If her speaking engagements increased...If she survived this current mess...

A few minutes later, Callahan pulled up at the curb in front. “I’m assuming you don’t have a pass for the garage, right?”

“Right. No car. No pass.”

He killed the engine and got out.

“You can’t park here,” Shelby said when he opened her door.

“Yes, I can,” he said. “Come on.”

From close behind him, she heard Dave the Doorman’s voice. “Hey, buddy, you can’t park there. Oh, hello, Ms. Simon.” He peered through the window on the passenger side. “I’m afraid your friend can’t . . .”

Callahan swore, dug his badge out of his back pocket, and flashed it at Dave, who mumbled something that sounded like an apology.

“We won’t be here long,” Callahan told him.

“Yessir.”

After Shelby got out of the low-slung car, the doorman, still obviously suspicious of a man in ripped jeans and a duct-taped vest, badge or no badge, leaned close and whispered to her, “Is everything okay, Ms. Simon?”

“Everything’s fine, Dave. Thanks.”

The man looked at her as if to say,
Well, okay. If you say so
, then he loped ahead of them to open the door to the lobby.

Once inside the marble and sleek chrome entry, Shelby pulled her keys from her purse and headed for the little room off the main foyer where the mailboxes were located.

“Whoa. Wait a minute. Hold on.” Mick Callahan caught her arm. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m going to check my mail.”

“You’re going to...!” He still had her by the arm, and now he was shaking his head and sort of growling. “What are you? Stupid? Deaf? Suicidal?”