Urban Renewal (34 page)

A PHONE
buzzed in the guard booth at the gates to a mini-mansion in the lush suburb of Winnetka.

“Front gate, Anthony speaking,” a smartly uniformed man answered.

“Have Bert bring the coupe around to the front.”

“Yes, sir,” Anthony answered, nodding over to another uniformed man, next to him in the booth. “Right away.”

The other man took a holster and cartridge belt from a hook, strapped it on, and walked across the manicured, floodlit lawn to a four-car garage. He pressed a transmitter on his belt and the garage door rose. The interior was as brightly lit as an operating room.

The man opened the door of an anthracite-black Bentley Continental GT, its flanks gleaming under endless coats of carnauba. He started the car and sat patiently, listening to the muted purr of power. Then he slowly backed out to the circular driveway in front of a white brick two-story house and vacated the driver’s seat, leaving the door open.

A man came down the steps to the car, moving with an air of moderate caution. He was dressed in a conservative midnight-blue suit. His brilliant white shirt set off a red-and-blue tie in a tiny diamond pattern that rippled in the glare of the floodlights.

“Everything okay?” the man asked.

“All quiet, Mr. Bernardi,” the guard said, touching his cap with two fingers. He maintained his position even as the Bentley shot away, firing a barrage of marble chips from the driveway at his ankles.

The big coupe turned at the next corner, heading for Chicago’s downtown, the Loop. Its driver punched a single button on the cellular phone in the console between the bucket seats, and lit a cigarette while the phone rang through the speaker system.

“Hello …?”

“It’s me. I’m on my way.”

“Oh, good, honey. I was wondering when—”

“
Don’t
wonder, bitch. That’s not your job. I’ll be there in an hour, tops.”

“I’ll be waiting, honey. I—”

The man who called himself “The Accountant” broke the connection.

As the Bentley rolled onto a winding stretch of road, a young woman in a wheelchair watched from a darkened room lit only by the sickly amber glow of a computer screen. She lifted a pair of infrared night glasses to her eyes, touched the zoom, zeroed in on the license plate: “ACCT 1.”

The young woman dropped the night glasses to her lap, wheeled herself over to the computer. A few lightning-fast keystrokes opened a small window in the upper left corner of the screen.

“?” appeared in the window.

Her fingers tapped keys; “Rolling” appeared on her screen. She hit another key and the screen went blank. One more keystroke and her hard drive began reformatting. She immediately turned to a new computer and booted it into life.

In an office on a high floor of the Sears Tower, a man turned from another computer screen and picked up a telephone.

In an after-hours joint on the West Side, Ace felt a vibration in his shirt pocket. He took out a small box and glanced at its liquid-crystal display. The blade-thin killer walked through the club, into a back room where a man was watching television. He turned from the screen at Ace’s approach, waiting. When Ace nodded, the man got up and walked out the back door.

A city ambulance was cruising the Dan Ryan Expressway. A round-faced Hispanic woman was driving, her hair spilling out from under her cap. A lanky white man with a prominent Adam’s apple was in the passenger seat. Their radio was quiet. A
b-r-r-r-ing
sound filled the cab. The lanky man took a mobile phone from his shirt pocket and flipped it open. He didn’t speak.

“Alert,” the phone said into his ear.

The lanky man nodded at his partner.

“
TELL CACASO
he has a deal,” the man in the Bentley was saying into his cellular phone just as the door to the truck bay of an abandoned warehouse at the edge of the Badlands slid up.

A car flowed out into the night—an anonymous citycamoed sedan that no one was ever sure they had actually just seen. A pudgy man was at the wheel, guiding the massive vehicle delicately with his fingertips.

“I got him on the scanner,” Cross said from the passenger seat. “Probably the
federales
do, too—they like to keep track of their assets.”

Buddha said nothing, piloting the Shark Car through the Warehouse District on the Near South Side, heading toward the Loop.

Cross pulled a burner cell from a shoulder holster, hit a number.

“How close?” he asked.

“He’s on the Drive,” a voice came back. “Maybe ten minutes. Fifteen tops.”

Cross pushed another button on the cell phone, waited for the telltale hiss of acid being released, and tossed it out the window.

“He’s going to his girlfriend’s, Buddha. So they’ll have a couple of his boys out front, to cover him. It has to be on the turn-in, okay?”

“Sure, boss.”

The Bentley kept well within the speed limit. The driver talked on his phone, making deals with his mouth. And making plans in his head. The sleek custom-painted car turned off Lake Shore Drive, heading to the Gold Coast apartment where his mistress waited.

“He’s about two kliks away now, Buddha. Stay sharp.”

The pudgy man made no acknowledgment.

Cross hit a number on another phone. In the cab of the ambulance, the lanky man didn’t speak, just listened:

“Going down” was all he heard.

“Hit it!” the lanky man told his partner. As she stepped on the gas, he picked up his radio.

“We’re going out of service for a personal. Fifteen minutes; acknowledge.”

“You’re clear,” came back the dispatcher’s voice.

“Let’s hit the Gold Coast, Zee,” he said. “There’s a little Afghan joint not far from there I want to try.”

“Remind you of old times?” The woman smiled.

The Bentley motored along, its smug driver never noticing the anonymous Shark Car moving in from a side street.

“Got him?” Cross asked.

“Locked,” Buddha said, focusing.

“Harvest time,” Cross said, adjusting his shoulder belt.

As the Bentley slowed down for the corner, the Shark Car took it broadside, knocking the heavy coupe into a line of parked vehicles at the curb. Cross slid from the car, looking dazed, his hands empty.

Bernardi bounced from his coupe, unhurt. And angry. As Cross approached, the informer’s fists were balled, and his face was a mottled pattern of red and white.

“You stupid hillbilly sonofabitch! Look at my car.”

“I’m … sorry, man,” Cross muttered. “Look, I got insurance. Really. See.…”

Cross reached into the pocket of his coat. The sneer vanished from Bernardi’s face as the silenced semi-auto came up. The first shot took away the bridge of his nose. Cross walked over, cranked off two more rounds into the man’s head, one in each eye. The Shark Car was off the block before the doorman at the fancy building a block away had finished dialing 911.

“
DAMN!
You hear that, Zee?”

“Yeah. Let’s go!”

Less than a minute later, the lanky man was back on the phone.

“We’re coming in, got one down.”

“Trauma team?”

“You can try, but there’s no way he’s gonna make it, looks
real
bad. But his license says he’s an organ donor. May not be too late to … you know, with all head wounds. We’ve got him iced down—maybe they can save
something
.”

“You’re clear to fly, come on.”

“ETA under two minutes.”

The ambulance piled into the hospital lot. The body was wheeled out on a stretcher, rushed straight into the OR. Then the surgeons went to work.

THE PHONE
rang in the woman’s home in Merrillville.

“Mrs. Layne?”

“Yes.”

“Please come right away. A casualty just arrived, too late to save him. But he was an organ donor, and his heart’s in perfect condition. We’ve done the blood-typing, and it appears to be an ideal match. We’ve already started surgery on your husband.”

“It’s the miracle!” the woman cried out, as if she had known it would come.

“
CLARA TOOK
the money?” Ace asked, just the barest whiff of suspicion in his tone.

“Sure. I told her it was Big Luke’s. Money he gave me to hold, a long time ago.”

“Well, he
did
that, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“We
spent
that money. And a lot more. All on those punks we paid to keep Clara’s place safe.”

“That’s right.”

“No way you were holding
that
much, bro. I don’t know what else Big Luke was into, but—”

“Pretty close,” Cross admitted. “But, yeah, it was running low.”

“So where’d the money for Clara to buy that house come from?”

“I invested what was left.”

“Sounds like you bet on a long shot.”

“Yeah. Just like when Buddha goes drag racing.”

“
THAT IS
your calling card, is it not?” The speaker was sitting in partial shadow. His shape was slender, his voice transcontinental.

“Calling card?”

“Your—I am not sure how to say this—perhaps, your ‘motto’?”