Konrath, Joe - Dirty Martini (27 page)

“Because you’re functionally retarded?” Harry offered. “Going senile? Have Alzheimer’s disease? Personally, I wouldn’t mind Alzheimer’s. You buy one magazine, and you’re entertained for the rest of your life.”

I drew in a sharp breath, having one of those rare moments where everything suddenly came together. If the Chemist truly wanted to hurt some cops, he needed to strike where there was a large concentration of us in a small area.

“PoliceFest,” I whispered.

More than twenty thousand cops, plus another twenty thousand family members and visitors, all in the same place at the same time.

“I think I broke your radio,” Harry said, handing me a knob with his rubber hand.

I jammed down the accelerator. While it wasn’t enough to pin us to our seats, I was pushing eighty soon enough.

“What the hell are you doing, Jackie?”

“I’m praying,” I told him. “Praying that I’m wrong.”

CHAPTER 36

T
HE VILLAGE OF SKOKIE
covered roughly ten square miles. It was one of Chicago’s larger suburbs, with a population of over sixty thousand, bordering the city on the north side.

I was burning some serious rubber, edging the car up into the nineties, and then I had to stop very quickly. Traffic had gone from open to insane. The Touhy ramp off of I-94 was backed up for at least a mile, bumper to bumper. All because of PoliceFest.

“McGlade, grab my cherry—”

I regretted saying it as soon as it breached my lips, but before I could qualify it he’d already answered, “I think I’m about thirty-five years too late for that, Jackie.”

“The red and blue light, smart-ass. In the backseat, on the floor.”

He fished around for it and set it on his lap.

“They still use these things?”

“The classics are still the best. Plug it in and stick it to the roof.”

McGlade put the cord into my cigarette lighter, and it turned on and began to spin, flashing colors.

“My key chain light is brighter than this stupid thing.”

“Just put it on the roof.”

“What is that? Is that a suction cup?”

“The roof, McGlade!”

I hit the gas and pulled onto the shoulder, spraying gravel. McGlade leaned out the window and attached the cherry to the top of my car. When he finished, he sat back down and buckled his seat belt.

“Where’s the siren?” he asked.

“No siren.”

McGlade seemed to consider it.

“Want me to stick my head out the window and go
woo-woo-woo
?”

I hopped back onto the street, buzzed through the red light, and swung east onto Touhy, missing a pickup truck by a good two feet.

“Did you pull down the little lever on the suction cup?” I asked, swerving to avoid the SUV ahead of me.

“There was a lever?”

I tapped my brakes, and the cherry bounced off my hood and onto the sidewalk, where it hit a mailbox and splintered into a million little red and blue pieces.

“Hell.” I frowned. “That thing was vintage.”

“Don’t worry about it. You can hire a midget to sit on your roof and hold a lava lamp. You’d get the same effect.”

I passed a Jeep, hit the horn, and took a right onto Lincoln.

“How old is this car?” McGlade asked. “It’s a model made before airbags, isn’t it?”

“Just go limp at impact. It’s the same thing.”

I heard a whirring sound, and chanced a look. McGlade had locked his hand onto the door grip. I smiled, and pinned the speedometer.

“McGlade, what street is the festival on?”

“Pratt and Central Park Avenue. You could drop me off wherever, though. Up here is fine. Or here. Or at that nail salon. I was thinking about doing my nails.”

I zipped past the nail salon, breezed through a yellow light, and hung a left onto Pratt. Then I hit the brakes.

Yellow sawhorses blocked off the street, a thick wall of people milling around behind them. Thousands of people.

“Parking is going to be a bitch,” Harry said.

He was right. And because a lot of these folks were cops, all of the hydrants were already taken. I stopped in the middle of the street, dug my ankle holster—complete with AMT—out of my purse, and put my leg up onto the steering wheel to strap it on. Naturally, McGlade had to comment on this.

“You’re pretty flexible for an old chick. Can you put your foot behind your head? I dated this girl once. Well, not really
dated.
”

I grabbed my purse, hopped out of the car, and waded into the crowd. It was elbow to elbow, a carnival that seemed to go on forever, complete with music and rides and plenty of food. Besides the prerequisite amount of coptosterone, there were also plenty of women and children, and every third person was eating or drinking something. Beer. Lemonade. Corn on the cob. Hot dogs. Nachos. If the Chemist was going to unleash his toxins at this event, a lot of people would die.

I pushed my way up to a popcorn vendor and asked who was in charge. He had no idea, but offered me a program. I folded out the map and studied the gigantic layout. The information booth was dead center. I moved as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast at all. I literally had to force my way through people, enduring a slew of unhappy stares and a few off-color remarks.

“So what’s the rush anyway?” Harry had somehow caught up and was right behind me. “You think this poison guy is going to try something?”

“I don’t know. There’s a good chance he did something. This guy hates cops, and here’s a chance to kill a bunch at once.”

“Think he did something to the soft pretzels?”

“I don’t know.”

McGlade shoved a large pretzel under my nose.

“Take a bite, tell me if it’s safe.”

I knocked it aside, pushed over to the edge of the crowd, and walked along the perimeter, which was much quicker.

“Lots of people,” McGlade said. He’d risked it; his mouth was full of pretzel. “Whaddaya think? Thirty thousand? Forty? Be tough to poison this many people.”

Harry had a point. So many different vendors, it would be an impossible feat to hit all of them, or even half of them. If I wanted to kill a bunch of people here, how would I do it? Gas? I spied a helium tank being used to fill balloons. I also noted a cooling-off station, which sprayed a fine mist of cool water onto people who walked beneath it. The problem with either was speed. The poison would have to be slow-acting, so as many people as possible could become infected before panic made the rest flee, or instantaneous, getting as many people as possible at once.

“How about a crop duster?” McGlade said. “He could swoop down, trailing gas.”

Harry pretended his fake hand was an airplane and made zooming sounds as he flew it around. I double-checked the map, decided that this was the midpoint, and forced myself back into the masses. The information booth was appropriately crowded, and I marched to the front of the line and said, “Who’s in charge?”

The guy behind the counter folded his arms.

“This isn’t the end of the line, lady.”

“I’m a cop,” I told him.

“It’s PoliceFest. Everyone here is a cop.”

The people I’d cut in front of echoed the statement.

“Look,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’m on the Chemist case. Have you heard of it? I think he’s here, and he’s going to kill a bunch of people. Now, who is in charge?”

“Jim. Jim Czajkowski. I’ll call him.”

He used the walkie-talkie attached to his belt buckle. A minute later a short, slightly pudgy man with a waxed handlebar mustache stepped into the booth.

“I’m Jim, Skokie PD. What’s going on?”

I leaned in and spoke softly. “We have reason to believe that this festival might be the target of a terrorist attack. Have you noticed anything unusual?”

“Not really. I mean, setting up an event like this is a nightmare. There are always snags.”

“What kind of snags?”

“Well, the music tent has collapsed twice. The garbage cans are filling up faster than expected. Some moron drank too much and cracked open his skull.”

“Are you sure it was alcohol?”

“I’m sure. He got into a drinking contest with his buddies.”

“Anything else out of the ordinary? Problems? Complaints? Maybe from before the festival started?”

“There’s that damn portable toilet truck.”

Where had I recently heard about portable toilets? Herb. He was searching for a stolen truck.

“What about the truck?”

“Parked here real early this morning, right in the middle of everything, but didn’t unload. All of those Porta Potties are sitting up there, just taking up space. We can’t even take them down ourselves, because they’re wrapped up in chains.”

“Show me.”

Jim led the way. Harry once again fell into step behind me, this time eating a hot dog. We walked past a Tilt-A-Whirl, a ring toss booth, and the aforementioned music tent, which appeared to have collapsed again. Eventually, we wound up behind a row of carny game booths on a small patch of dirt, next to a semi with a flatbed trailer attached. Stacked on the trailer were thirty-six portable toilets.

“Yipes!” McGlade said. “Johns!”

Jim spit onto the grass. “Someone just drove them up and left them there. And look at the way they’re chained together.”

I moved closer and agreed it went above and beyond simply securing them to the trailer. The heavy gauge chains formed a net around the toilets, and there were thick padlocks wherever two chains intersected. It would take an hour just to unlock them all.

I pulled out my cell phone and called Herb.

“Hi, Jack. I heard about the Bains wedding. Nice work.”

“Thanks. That stolen Porta Potti truck, was it a flatbed, red Peterbilt cab?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you at the fest?”

“Bernice and I are in the music tent, watching the volunteers wrestle with the collapsing canvas. Why?”

“I think I found your truck. I’m to the west of you maybe fifty yards, behind the Tilt-A-Whirl.”

“I’ll be right there.”

McGlade had climbed up to the driver’s side of the cab and was peering in the window.

“Hey, Jackie. Maybe you should take a look at this.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a clock.”

“Most trucks have clocks, McGlade.”

“This one is counting down. It’s at 18:52 . . . 51 . . . 50 . . .”

That didn’t sound good. Not at all. I turned to Jim. “We need some tools. Bolt cutters, a saw, anything to get through these chains. Is there a PA system?”

“There’s one in the music tent.”

“Use it. Get some bomb squad guys over here.”

Jim made a face. “If I go on the mike and say we need the bomb squad, people are going to panic. You ever see a human stampede?”

“Announce that it’s time for the Bomb Squad Beer Keg Defusing Contest or something stupid like that. Snag the first guy that shows up.”

Jim trotted off, and I pulled myself up onto the flatbed and cautiously approached one of the portable toilets. It was an aqua green color, made of fiberglass, about seven feet tall, and had a padlock on the door. The thing wouldn’t budge, even when I leaned into it, hard. I wrapped my knuckles on the side and there was a dull thump, like it was full of something. I knelt down and tried to pry away the door using the lower corner. I couldn’t get my fingers in the crack.

But I knew who could.

“McGlade! Come here!”

“Where are you?”

“Next to the toilets!”

“I don’t have to go right now.”

I clenched my teeth, remembered that he had the emotional maturity of a three-year-old, and forced myself to relax.

“Harry, you
do
want me to talk to the mayor, right?”

He sauntered over and stared up at me.

“What do you need, baby? Moral support?”

“You think you can crack one of these things open using your hand?”

“Maybe.”

He tried to pull himself onto the trailer, but couldn’t get a leg up over the edge. I had to help him.

“Whoa. I need to rest for a minute. Be a good girl and run get me a lemonade.”

“Dammit, Harry, we don’t have time for you to play around. See if you can open up one of these.”

He sighed, crawled over to the toilet, and rolled up his sleeve. I watched, both fascinated and revolted, as he peeled off the flesh-colored rubber, revealing a curved metal claw with one lower thumb and two upper fingers.

“Here, Jackie. Hold my hand.”

He tossed me the rubber cover, and I flinched and it fell at my feet. McGlade didn’t notice. He’d gripped the lower corner of the Porta Potti and I saw his lips whisper,
“Close.”
The fiberglass made a cracking sound, then splintered inward.

“Aw, Christ. That’s disgusting. Open.”