Authors: Mark Richard Zubro

An Echo of Death (18 page)

BOOK: An Echo of Death

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“Children, babies, whole families have died in the drug wars. They wouldn't care about killing someone they didn't know and was even a remote danger. Information such as Brad Stawalski described would be plenty threatening enough for them to still be after you.”

“Why not just change everything?” I asked. “Why keep bothering us?”

“Maybe it is easier to get rid of you than to upset their plans. You want to move from comfortable safe houses because some rich punk idiot finds information? Maybe Proctor stumbled onto their main distribution route and plans into this country. He might not have told Stawalski everything.”

We talked about what to do for a while, but got nowhere. We just didn't know anything, and no one had any suggestions about what we could do to remove the threat. A drug summit between us and them to convince them we were innocent bystanders didn't seem likely to happen.

After thirty minutes of this, the consular official said, “There are other possibilities. Ms. Montez mentioned relics earlier. We should explain.”

The archaeologists spoke up, “The traffic in pre-Columbian relics out of Mexico is a scandal. Illegal trafficking is outlawed, but it goes on. And then you have dealing in fake relics. We're talking about millions of dollars.”

“Fake relics?” Scott asked.

“Oh, yes. People desperately want pre-Columbian artifacts. It has become much more difficult to get the real ones out of the country, although certainly not impossible. But enterprising thieves have managed to start a lucrative market in the fake items. Some of it is really poor quality, but that doesn't seem to matter. Selling fake art is hardly a phenomenon unique to Mexico.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Glen could have been being chased by someone who had stolen a relic or a fake one?”

“Some are priceless. Unscrupulous collectors would pay a fortune for some of the finds. They pay huge sums of money for items that have little intrinsic value.”

Hidalgo said, “Customs officials, police on both sides of the border, governments, try to stop the pillage. Brad Stawalski didn't tell you the whole story by half. Brad has been stumbling around the countryside trying to make a quick score. He's been to the diggings. He's been spotted with known relic thieves. Then he hooked up with Glen.”

So Brad had been far from honest with us.

I'd sat for an hour of this when finally the vanilla shake from earlier began to rumble in my stomach. I squirmed in extreme discomfort for fifteen minutes. Finally I announced I had to use the john. I was given a key for a room down the hall.

As I exited the office area, Rosarita caught up to me. I didn't want to stop, but she grabbed my arm, “There is the real possibility that either Mr. or Mrs. Proctor, both of whom have great sums of money invested in Mexico, were behind some kind of deal that went bad. A diplomat would never make such a charge because the investment money from two such prominent real-estate people means a great deal to our country.”

I told her we would have to talk more in a minute. I practically tore out of her arm. I hurried past the banks of elevators and darkened offices. At the far end of the corridor, I unlocked the john door and hurried in. Minutes later,
feeling much relieved, I washed my hands. As I pulled down the towel to dry them, I thought I heard voices in the hall. Maybe others were taking an opportunity for a break.

I swung open the door, stepped into the hall, and instantly pulled myself back. I'd seen the back of a bald head. I knew he'd have a blond mustache that reached down below his chin.

I didn't hear feet running toward me, so I presumed I hadn't been spotted. I needed to go for help. The swiftness with which some of these groups killed might mean that Scott and the rest had only minutes or seconds to live.

Carefully I opened the door. I managed only a glimpse of three men with machine guns watching the corridor outside the office I'd been in. I was too far away to make a rush toward them down the hall. I had no weapon, so I needed a plan. I had to get out.

But all possibility of plans soon vanished. I heard voices again. I heard loud protests for a few moments from one of the Mexican cops. I heard a slight thud, a gasp, and no more protests. I waited behind the shut john door. I checked the ceiling to see if it was the kind you could remove the tiles from and crawl away through the ceiling. It wasn't.

If I was caught here, there was no escape. I listened intently. I heard the elevator doors open and, a minute later, close. No sounds penetrated through the washroom door.

I checked my watch. I waited a minute, then two. Finally I eased the washroom door open.

The first thing I saw was the remnants of the top of the head of Hidalgo, the Mexican cop. The pop and thud I'd heard had been his taking a bullet between his eyes. A large portion of his brains was smeared on the wall and carpet behind and under his head.

Still I heard no sound.

I continued inching the door open. The corridor was empty. I eased myself into the hall, still listening. I crept
down the carpet past the still-warm body and toward the conference room we'd been in.

One of the guards lay crumpled on the ground. His head was in worse shape than the Mexican cop's. The only thing moving besides me in the office were drops of blood from the corpses.

I grabbed the nearest phone and dialed 911. The dispatcher told me to stay put. The cops would be here in seconds.

I hurried to the elevator. I wasn't about to wait while they could be hurting Scott. I pressed the down and up buttons. It might have been all of twenty seconds before the elevator arrived. I thought it might have been hours.

As the doors opened, I flattened myself against the wall. No gun barrel peeked out. No person emerged. I leaped on and pushed the button for the ground floor. The car made no stops on the way down. In the lobby, the security people looked at me in bewilderment. Obviously, captors and captured hadn't gone this way. I ran to the parking-garage level. The attendant in the booth at the exit gate was outside and cursing while clutching shards of the broken gate in his hands.

I rushed to my truck, jammed the key in the ignition, shoved it into gear, and roared toward the exit. The parking attendant held up his hands to try and stop me. I gunned the engine. He leaped out of the way.

I pulled to the edge of the driveway on Randolph Street and stopped. They must have gone right because Randolph is one way going west, but no vehicle was stopped at the light at the corner of Michigan Avenue. Traffic farther down Randolph toward the west and on Michigan going north and south flowed normally. I'd been in a big rush and had absolutely nowhere to go. No vehicle description. No idea where they might have taken Scott, what they might have done with the other people. I could wait for the cops, or I could search.

The parking attendant hurried up. I interrupted his imprecations
early on. “What kind of car just drove out?” I asked.

He continued to berate me. I opened the door, climbed down, and grabbed the guy by the front of his shirt. I didn't have time to remember Miss Manners's Guide to Throttling Important Information Out of Someone. By the time I got through to him and found out they had left in a black van, there wasn't one anywhere in sight. I sat back in my truck, put my hands at the twelve o'clock position on the steering wheel, and rested my head on them. I could race around and around endless blocks in ever-widening concentric circles and drive for hours uselessly, or I could sit there in frustration and fear. I wanted to choose neither, but my choice was made for me by the arrival of building security, with the cops mere seconds behind them. And then it was an hour of questioning.

Of course, Bolewski and Quinn showed up. I don't remember giving anyone a reasonable or even sensible answer. All I knew was that Scott was gone and in danger, and I was helpless.

I called Bill Proctor's car phone again and told him the latest. He was aghast and asked whether he could help. He insisted that it was more important than ever that we meet. I needed to think. Reluctantly I agreed to meet him at nearby Buckingham Fountain in half an hour.

When the cops were finished talking to me, Quinn was nice enough to offer to have somebody drive me home, or to call somebody to get me.

I told him no.

He said, “We've still got cops outside your building, and one of ours is doing security. You'll be able to go home tonight.”

“After I find Scott,” I said.

It was midnight, time to meet Bill Proctor. I wondered why he'd been so insistent about having to meet. Maybe he'd have information that would lead to Scott. I returned to my truck and made a slow exit down Randolph Street,
then south on Michigan. I took Monroe Street, with the Art Institute and the Petrillo Music Shell on my right, then continued out to Lake Shore Drive. I wanted to make a complete circuit of Grant Park and the area around the fountain before I made any stops. I wanted to check for possible traps and to see whether I was being followed.

Grant Park was constructed from the dregs of the great Chicago Fire of 1871. The good citizens took the debris from the conflagration and dumped it in the lake to create a park. Buckingham Fountain, which sat in the middle, had long since been turned off for the winter.

I made a complete circuit of the rectangle around the fountain: out Monroe to Lake Shore Drive, south to Balbo Drive, and west back to Columbus Drive. I craned my neck in all directions at every second, paying just enough attention to traffic to avoid an accident. As it was I got honked at viciously and heard brakes squealing behind me when I pulled back onto Columbus going north.

During the day, it was almost impossible to park on Columbus Drive; but at this time on a Monday night, especially with the dank and dreary weather, fewer than half the parking spaces were filled.

I pulled up to the light, where Congress Parkway runs into Grant Park. I was three cars from the intersection with two cars behind and a line of traffic on my left. With the oversized wheels, the view from my truck gave me an excellent perspective over the tops of all the vehicles. Finally I spotted Bill Proctor standing next to the fountain. I took another look around. The line of cars in the lane on my left inched forward enough so that a red Toyota pulled up next to me. The passenger-side window slid down a few inches, and I saw the glint of the barrel of a gun.

No car was parked on my right. I swung the truck over and jumped the curb. As the wheels thumped and rumbled, I heard several shots and the glass in the back of the cab shattered. Another bullet struck the roof. I raced over
the pavement to Proctor, threw open the door, and shouted, “Get in!”

He looked bewildered. The thought flashed through my head that maybe he was part of an elaborate setup. Or whoever was shooting was after him, too. He tumbled into the cab. Before he had the door shut, I tromped my foot onto the gas pedal. Too many trees stood in the way to drive over the grassy portions of the park. I rushed to the top of the stairs that led down to Lake Shore Drive, slammed on the brakes, eased up on the pedal, then thudded down the stairs. I glanced in the rearview mirror. They weren't following through the park, but it would take them only a minute or two to hurry around the park and come back this way. The traffic southbound was light. I swung the car to the right and sped toward the Field Museum of Natural History.

“What the hell is going on?” Proctor asked.

“Your fucking brother has managed to screw up a whole lot of everything! Bodies are piling up at an alarming rate. I might ask you the same questions. What the hell is going on? Why are we meeting here and now? Who are all these people?”

“I don't know,” Proctor said. “Honest to God, I don't know what's going on, but I'm here because I want to help. I couldn't get away from the house any earlier. I think I found out some things.”

I roared past the museum and swung to the right to get into the lanes for the Stevenson Expressway. I wanted to get as far away as possible from any pursuit as quickly as I could. One thought blared in my head. Save Scott. Find him. Rescue him. Absolutely no one and nothing was going to get in my way for that. I thought of our fight in the car. Those weren't going to be the last words I ever said to him. When I saw him again, I'd never stop saying “I love you.”

Proctor was silent for several minutes as we drove southwest down the Stevenson. He wore faded blue jeans
that clung to his slender waist and hips with no belt. His shoes and socks were white. He wore an Oxford University sweatshirt.

The radio was playing jangling jazz on WNIB. I flicked it off. Noise was not what I needed. Out past Damen Avenue, I drummed my fingers on the wheel, clutched at it with white-knuckled fists, tapped my foot against the floor, or rapped my knuckles against the window.

At around Cicero Avenue, Proctor said, “Tell me what's happened.”

“Your brother is responsible for the danger my lover is in at this moment.”

My tone didn't invite conversation. He kept quiet until we passed First Avenue.

“Do you want to know what I found out?” he asked.

BOOK: An Echo of Death

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