Sleep Tight (28 page)

 

The convoy of trucks streamed east, strung out along I-80. Evans drove the third truck, and kept the drivers coordinated through a disposable cell phone. Every driver carried one. He kept them spaced roughly a quarter mile apart, allowing cars and even other trucks to slip into the convoy, all in the interest of maintaining the lowest possible profile. The trailers and tanks all sported different corporate logos.

Evans didn’t want to think about what they were actually hauling, about the hell that would be unleashed if one of his drivers happened to accidently collide with a sleepy tourist behind the wheel of a minivan.

Evans called Dr. Reischtal. “On schedule,” he said. “Should be arriving in the area by early evening.”

“See that you do,” Dr. Reischtal said, and hung up.

 

 

Uncle Phil pounded on the bathroom door. “I’d appreciate it if you could get out here right fucking now.”

Lee raised his head out of the icy spray and yelled, “Heard you the first time. Go wait downstairs.” He added under his breath, “Ugly ass troll.”

Phil thought Lee had said something else, but decided to ignore it. He continued to yell. “You’re late, and if you fuck this meeting up, swear to Christ, they’ll find a way to pin this shitstorm on you. It’s your ass.”

Lee reluctantly turned the water off. He loved his showers cold, with the handle twisted all the way to the right, craving how the freezing needles lowered his body temperature to a tingling numbness. There wasn’t much worse than feeling his pores start to ooze sweat at the thought of stepping out into the goddamn humidity.

He dried off and went into the bedroom, threw on a suit. His new phone rang. Lee opened it, said, “What?”

Phil said, “Tell me you’re on the way down.”

Lee snapped the phone shut. Phil had left it for him. It was a cheap piece of shit, unable to connect to the Internet or any other bells and whistles, but his old one wasn’t working right ever since he threw it at the TV. He didn’t even want to think about the fucking plasma, let alone look at it. It didn’t matter. All of this shit was temporary.

He walked into the living room, struggling with his tie. Kimmy and Grace were on the couch, faces plastered to the windows, watching the endless procession of dozens and dozens of CTA buses, all streaming through Grant Park before heading south on Lake Shore Drive. Good.
Let ’em stare at the spectacle
, he thought. It would keep them out of his hair for a while.

“Gotta go, babe. They need me.”

Kimmy turned, confusion and worry crinkling her forehead. “Okay, but aren’t we supposed to evacuate too? That’s what the news said.”

“You gonna listen to the news or you gonna listen to me? Who the hell you think has the inside scoop? Huh? No, you two stay here. You’re absolutely, one hundred percent safe. Believe me, it’s already over. I’ll be back quick as I can, soon as I get this business done. Then later on tonight, we’ll all go back down to the press conference. So lay out your best outfit and be ready for a night on the town.”

“It’s all going to be okay? The city, all the sick people, I mean? They’re gonna get all those bugs, right?”

“Of course.” He gave her his best smile. “They’re just being careful. And as it happens, it’s gonna be the best thing that ever happened for us. I’ll make a big deal out of how I’m volunteering to stay behind to protect my city. Phil says the media is gonna eat it up. Says it could be the defining moment of my career. You’ll be at my side later when I give that press conference telling people that the city has been saved. You watch. I’m gonna be a hero. Trust me.”

“Okay, baby. Can we bring Grace?”

“Yeah, I wanna come,” Grace said, finally tearing her eyes away from all the buses when she heard her name.

Lee kept his grin alive. “We’ll have to see, kiddo.” He grabbed his briefcase. It was empty except for a
Maxim
magazine, but Phil told him he looked more professional carrying it around. He checked his watch. “I’m sorry, but I gotta run. Phil and Bryan are downstairs.”

Kimmy came off the couch and stood in the sunlight, hands clasped at her chest. “Love you.”

It was impossible to ignore the pleading, questioning tone in her voice. Lee struggled to keep his smile wide. “Yeah, see you later,” he said and left.

As he walked down the hall to the elevator, he reconsidered his initial anger and outright revulsion at being around the brat at home, let alone in public. The more he thought about it, the more he came to understand that she might not be such a bad prop for the press conference. Might be the best visual confirmation that the city was safe, hoisting a four-year-old girl to his shoulders. Yeah. That would make a hell of a shot.

He made a final adjustment to his tie in the reflective metal of the elevator. Funny how things turned out. Less than twelve hours ago he had been on his way to becoming one of the most reviled politicians in the city’s history. And for Chicago, that was really saying something. The way Phil barked, he’d be lucky if he avoided jail time. But that was then, as they said, and now things had definitely swung back in his favor. He wondered what the hell that freak Dr. Reischtal wanted. He strode out into the lobby and saluted the doorman.

The doorman, some simpering idiot who couldn’t find a real job, held up his hand. “So sorry, Mr. Shea, but I’m trying to get a tally of who is left in the building. Most of the residents have already left, of course, but I’ve been told that I need to give the soldiers a count of who is left on the premises.”

“You can scratch my place off your list, then,” Lee said. “It’s empty.”

“Oh, so Kimmy and Grace are gone, then? I must have missed them.”

Lee was irritated that this piss-boy knew Kimmy’s name. “I sent ’em to her mother’s last night. Like I said, it’s all clear up there.” Lee didn’t wait for a response, and strolled through the spinning doors, down the steps to where Bryan and Phil waited in the car.

 

Farther down Clark, where it passed under the El tracks that covered Van Buren, a slim slab of beige granite sat all by itself in the midst of a perfectly average city plaza, filled with plenty of benches, a few ornamental trees, some shrubs and flowers in long cement planters. Lots of people who worked in the Loop liked to sit in the sun and eat their lunch before returning to the skyscrapers. If you weren’t paying attention, you’d never know it was a maximum-security federal prison.

The windows gave it away. They were narrow slits and resembled ports for medieval archers to fire arrows, too small for anyone to squeeze through. A small, nondescript sign identified the building as the Metropolitan Correction Center.

Ed and Sam rolled into the secure parking lot next door. The guard at the entrance wasted time by having them wait in their car while he called his superior officer upstairs. He got the all-clear, but still demanded to know what he should do if he saw a rat—“or one of them bedbugs.”

Sam said, “You got a sidearm. Use it.”

Ed parked in a handicapped spot on the second level next to the walkway into the prison reserved for cops and prison personnel. The convicts were brought in through a different entrance, up on the sixth level, at the top of the parking structure.

The warden himself was waiting. “This, this is most unusual, officers.” The warden was in his sixties, with a head full of brilliant white hair and soft hands. He wanted to stop and talk in the corridor, but Sam and Ed blew past him, heading for the elevators. He hurried to catch up.

Ed said, “Call the Cook County sheriff and demand at least ten prisoner transfer buses, more if you can get ’em.”

“I talked to an Arturo Mendoza. He never did give me an adequate explanation.”

“Call the sheriff. Get as many buses as you can. Then turn on the goddamn TV.”

“I have received a call from the sheriff’s department. They have promised us their full cooperation.”

“What does that mean? How many buses, have they promised, specifically?”

“Three.”

“We need more.”

“It is my understanding that we are simply transporting the inmates to the holding cells at the Cook County facilities at Twenty-sixth and California. It may require two trips, three at the most. Three buses will be adequate.”

Ed stopped and put a hand on the warden’s shoulder. Ed said gently, “I’m not telling you how to do your job, but we’re gonna need more buses.” Sam recognized the good-cop, wise-older-brother tone. “Sure, we could pack everybody in here on a couple of buses, haul ’em down there and dump ’em, but there’s a lot of variables in this situation. We haven’t been able to talk to anybody down there yet, and so we’re not taking anything for granted. What happens if we get down there and find out that there’s no room? What then? You gonna leave eighty inmates locked on one bus with nowhere to go?”

The warden licked his lips and finally nodded. “I’ll call them back, see what I can arrange.”

He showed them into a briefing room, filled with guards. Most of the guards were watching the press conferences on TV. The cameras had just cut from the president outside the White House to the mayor at City Hall, who began to outline the details of the evacuation. The warden introduced Ed and Sam and explained to his men, “As many of you are aware, recent developments in the Loop have necessitated the evacuation of Chicago’s entire downtown area. CPD has seen fit to send us Detectives Jones and Johnson to oversee the transfer of every prisoner inside the MCC.”

The warden let that sink in. He turned to Ed and Sam. “Well, then. How can we help?”

Ed said, “First off, how many inmates are we talking about?”

“I believe the current population is five hundred and twenty-seven, both male and female. We’ll confirm that number, of course.”

“Where are they?”

The warden pulled down a large cross-sectional diagram of the prison and settled into the role of tour guide. “The MCC is a transition facility; that is, this is a way station for inmates who have been found guilty and are awaiting the details of their sentencing. Almost all of the inmates are waiting for further court hearings or to be transferred to a more permanent home. The average length of incarceration, at least within the MCC, is less than six months. We also feature a state-of the-art hospital, and anywhere from five to ten percent of our population have been transferred from other prisons within Illinois to receive treatment.”

He pointed to the diagram. The building had a triangle footprint, giving the guards clear sight lines for each narrow floor. “No prisoners are ever housed beneath the tenth floor. That gives us seventeen floors to utilize, and we have found it works to both our advantage and the inmates’ safety to spread them out, housing as few inmates as possible per floor. We pride ourselves on keeping our guests calm and comfortable.”

“Good. That’s our key,” Ed said and caught Sam’s eye.

The transitory nature of the prison made their jobs easier. The detectives realized that because inmates did not stay at the prison for any significant length of time, the institutionalized tribes that flourished wherever prisoners would spend decades behind bars, in crews bound by race or gang or belief, had failed to find a foothold. In a typical maximum-security prison, many of the inmates were facing life sentences, and had the time to establish structured organizations, forming hierarchies, protecting their tribe, as well as coordinating clever, vicious attacks against other gangs or the guards.

“Best way to avoid problems,” Ed said. “Keep everybody comfortable, but off-balance. I don’t want them to know what is going to happening next.”

Sam said, “We don’t want to give them a chance to get friendly with each other. If these boys ever got organized, they could overpower a bus without much trouble, and then we’ve got a mobile hostage situation on our hands.”

Ed addressed the entire room. “Understand this. Safety and security are our only responsibilities. There are only two things you are to communicate to the inmates. One, a state of emergency exists, and two, they are being transferred to a different location for their own safety. That is it. Don’t tell them anything else.”

“Except,” Sam said.

Ed said, “Except that a policy of zero tolerance has been implemented. If anyone steps out of line, guards will be shooting to kill.”

Ed and Sam watched as the guards had to fight their delight and hide their satisfied, victorious grins at finally being able to bolster their careers with a stamp of authority. Ed glanced at Sam. Sam closed his eyes and gave an imperceptible nod. The guards had been exposed to the institutionalized violence for too long, with no outlet, no way of turning the fear loose in a meaningful manner, no way of exorcising the demons that grew and multiplied in the dark in a place like this. In fact, letting off this kind of steam was frowned upon, and sometimes, it was flat-out illegal. Shooting ranges could only provide so much relief. It was like drinking near beer for an alcoholic.

Eventually, something had to give.

The guards were going to be a problem.

Sam could smell violence in the air, like a lightning storm on the horizon.

 

“That’s not the suit you’re wearing tonight, I hope.” Phil’s first words.

“No. It’s the suit I’m wearing right now,” Lee said. “The good ones are at the office.” Phil’s condescending attitude was getting tougher to swallow. “Never thought you’d be worrying about men’s fashion.”

“This might be the most important press conference of our lives. I’m worrying about everything.”

Bryan accelerated and shot down the side street to Upper Wacker. Phil explained, “All the interior roads are blocked. Right now, the only streets open to get into the Loop are Clark and Congress.”

“Shit. These people are serious.”

“You have no fucking idea.”

Bryan turned left on Clark, where they were met by staggered walls of sandbags and four soldiers, all carrying assault rifles and wearing surgical masks. They inspected Phil’s ID and checked their list. They came back and looked at Lee’s ID as well as Bryan’s. It must have checked out, because the soldiers waved them through.

“So listen, please, no jokes, okay? Don’t try to be funny,” Phil said.

“Why not? Nothing wrong with my sense of humor.” Lee tried to dismiss the whole thing.

Phil shook his head. “Absolutely not. Even those dago pricks only laugh to be polite, and they laugh at everything. You? You’re about as funny as a case of the clap.”

Bryan weaved through the sandbags and followed Clark down to City Hall. Lee glanced at the open plaza to the left, by the Daley Center, and was astonished to see that the giant Picasso sculpture was gone. He finally spotted it, lying on its side in the intersection of Dearborn and Washington, acting as a kind of barricade.

Phil caught his stunned expression and said, “They took it down because they wanted room to land the helicopters.”

Lee actually liked the sculpture, the way it had some sort of invisible tether to the heavens, as if it was some sort of pet from someone above. Lee thought it was a bad omen, this desecration of a Chicago landmark. But Phil was pissing him off, so Lee didn’t say anything. Bryan dropped them off in front of City Hall on the Cook County side. More soldiers checked their IDs once again.

Inside, they were directed upstairs to a large briefing room. The room had been built like an amphitheater, with descending rows of seats and tables curving around a central stage. A soldier directed Lee and Phil to one of the smooth tables with low lamps near the back. Some high-ranking official was down in the center, using a laser pointer to highlight areas of maps of the Loop and the subway system projected on the screens behind him.

The official, some major or general or something—Lee wasn’t too clear on these things—was laying out plans in a dry, almost disinterested tone. He was tall, with dark, vigorous eyebrows that didn’t match the gray, lifeless hair that had been cut close to his scalp. “Phase two is nearly complete, a total relocation of civilians to a neutral zone where they can be properly examined before being released into the public at large. Phase three preliminaries are complete and are ready to implement immediately. As we proceed with these two phases, phase four and five are being prepped.” He gestured at the map. “Every bridge, with the sole exception of the Congress Street Bridge, has been raised. The river has been irradiated with a compound that will . . . inhibit life.”

The officer traced the boundaries of the quarantine zone with his laser pointer. “The subway tunnels have been neutralized.” Lee figured this was code for blowing the shit out of the things. He sniggered.

Phil refused to look at him.

Lee got the hint.
Play along. Don’t make waves. And above all, don’t draw any attention to yourself.
Fine. Lee decided to play along. For now.

“To repeat, every bridge has been raised, except for Congress, and that will be raised within the hour. The river has been treated. No rat will survive the swim. And here”—the red dot swept along Roosevelt Avenue—“a continuous firebreak has been established, stretching from the Chicago River to Lake Shore Drive. We have squads spread out along Roosevelt Avenue, equipped with both .50 caliber firepower and flamethrowers.” He checked his watch. “In less than thirty minutes, the only access to downtown Chicago, in or out, will be restricted to this one lane of Lake Shore Drive.” The red dot seared into a spot just to the left of the Field Museum.

Some other senior official asked, “What about the lakefront?”

The major or general or whatever smiled. “The CDC has informed us that a cutting-edge medical and military vessel will be in place in the next several hours. Until then, the Coast Guard has agreed to help patrol the waters.” He surveyed his audience. “Trust me, gentlemen. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can escape the quarantine zone. This city will be locked down tighter than Fort Knox.”

He turned back to the map. “We are directing most of our forces down into the Blue Line subway stations, specifically Jackson Street Station. Platoons are gaining access to the underground through the post office and the Monadnock building. They will be spreading throughout the tunnels, forming an offensive that will be dispersing both fire and a lethal pesticide. This will provide an effective foundation, killing any infected rats, as well as any and all bugs with vapor chemicals that will reach into any crevice, any crack, any place where the bugs hide, and kill them.”

He added as an afterthought, “And if it is deemed necessary, the solution within the Chicago River can be set on fire.”

The speech had risen to a crescendo, and if this had been a political platform, that would be the cue to leap to your feet and start clapping like crazy. But since this was the military, the speaker took comfort in the total silence. He waited just as long as it would have taken for the applause to die down, and said, “Squads are currently conducting building-to-building searches, but this process takes time and manpower. Both of which we are in sore need of, I don’t need to remind you.”

Then he got into some math and started using words like, “kill ratio” and “projected casualties” and “dispersal rate” and Lee, too familiar with boring fucking governmental meetings, tuned him out immediately. Since his eyes had adjusted to the gloom, he took stock of the room.

Every emergency department in the city was there, along with soldiers. Damn near everybody was taking copious notes. The general, or whatever the hell he was up front, finally finished coordinating the underground sweeps with, “Remember, flush ’em out, get ’em up to the surface, where the burn crews will flash-fire ’em. Any questions?”

Phil gave Lee a sour look, as if telling him to keep quiet.

“Right, then,” the general or whatever said. “You all have your assignments. I suggest you don’t waste any time moving into position. This operation will start precisely at fifteen hundred hours. No exceptions, gentlemen.”

The soldiers at all of the low tables gathered their notes and guns and filed out, leaving Lee and Phil alone with the projected maps of the Loop. Even the general left. Lee’s patience lasted almost fifteen seconds. “Okay. Now what? Where the fuck is this guy?”

A cold, deliberate voice came from behind them, deep in the shadows of one of the alcoves that dotted the wall. “I wanted to say . . . thank you, for your cooperation in detaining two of your employees.”

Lee whipped his head around to find Dr. Reischtal. The doctor’s tiny glasses caught the reflection of the maps down in front and gave him the appearance of eyes that flashed with white fire. He was wearing an orange hazmat suit, and even though he didn’t have the face mask covering his head, the outfit still made Lee nervous.

“Sure. Anytime,” Lee said. “How, uh, can we help you?”

“I understand you are the man to speak with, if you have . . . special needs. Mr. Shea here”—Dr. Reischtal indicated Phil—“has kindly offered to further our business arrangement, by admitting that you, his nephew no less, are in a rarefied position to help government employees such as myself find quiet places to store some of the unpleasant consequences of my job description.”

“Maybe,” Lee said.

“Then perhaps you might be of some assistance. For the right price, of course. I have already negotiated a most generous donation to your reelection fund with your uncle, so if you are unhappy with your share, you can take it up with him.”

Phil started nodding his head when Dr. Reischtal mentioned the fund, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger in the universal sign of “okay.” He shook his head when Dr. Reischtal said the word “unhappy.”

Lee nodded.

Dr. Reischtal stood quite still. “I have heard of a quiet, private disposal site under the downtown area.”

“Maybe.”

“I have heard that this space is accessible by eighteen-wheeled semi trailer trucks. It is my understanding that you know of a route that could provide access.”

“I know of all kinds of dump sites. What I need to know is what you’re dumping.”

“I shall require access to this site.”

“You haven’t answered the question.”

“Perhaps your uncle can satisfy your curiosity.”

Lee didn’t look at Phil. “That’s not his job. You want to go under downtown, that’s my job.” Lee finally figured it out. “Okay. Okay. Maybe you could give me a better idea of what we’re dealing with here.”

“I don’t see how that should concern you.”

“If I’m deciding where to put something, I need to know some details. Like, how many?”

“How many . . . what?”

“How many trucks? How many loads? Three? Four? Five? Are you going to need special equipment to deliver the troublesome cargo? Or is it something that a couple of guys can manage? I need to know how much, you understand. Things like, is the product biodegradable? Would it benefit from close proximity to say, corrosive chemicals, which failed to find their way out of the city?”

“Perhaps as little as five. Perhaps as many as twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five what?”

“Twenty-five tanker trucks.”

Lee was impressed. “Whoa. Twenty-five loads. Shit. Okay. How long are you going to spread it out? You know, most of these guys, they drop off a load in February, maybe another in March. How do you want to space things out?”

“This will be a one time trip. Twenty-five trucks. Together.” Dr. Reischtal turned to the door. “Spaced around and under downtown Chicago.”

Lee thought of the long tunnel and the explosion. “When?”

“Perhaps days. Perhaps hours.”

Phil waved Lee over. He grasped Lee’s shoulder and bent him close. “Listen to me very carefully. You want to take what he’s offering. Please.”

Lee said, “If this asshole wants to come on my home turf here—”

“Shut up for five seconds and listen. If you want to have any kind of career at this at all, for the love of Christ shut the fuck up and listen.”

Lee swallowed his next sentence.

Phil tapped his chest. “It’s an easy choice. You handle this right, and by God, in ten years, you’re gonna be fucking president.”

 

 

The sheriff’s department would only provide three buses. No more.

“Fuck me,” Sam said and spit his gum into the gutter. He’d gone out to check everything out, just to make sure that they wouldn’t be putting federal prisoners on any kind of transport that might prove to be unstable and problematic. He stood at the curb as the three buses drove the wrong way down Clark and lined up along the curb. “Where’s the rest?” he asked the first driver.

The driver shrugged. “All I know is they sent me here. You got a problem, call the sheriff. I drive the bus. That’s all.”

The two other drivers all said the same thing. Sam pulled out his cell and called Ed. “Hate to say it, but this is gonna be all we got.”

Ed, watching the buses on closed circuit video monitors inside the main office, said, “Looks like we got the short end of the stick. Hold tight for a minute. I’ll call Arturo, see if I can’t get some answers.”

Sam didn’t bother to answer. He relayed the message to the drivers, who all sat snug ensconced inside a bulletproof plastic cocoon. This way, if the prisoners ever managed to gain the upper hand over the guards, they couldn’t reach the bus drivers. When Sam delivered the news, each of the three drivers shrugged and shook out a folded newspaper over the giant steering wheel, settling down for a long wait. These guys didn’t give two shits about the situation. The union only said they had to drive the bus, and nothing else.

Sam’s phone rang. It was Ed. Sam answered with, “Any luck?”

“Arturo isn’t answering his phone. So I called the sheriff’s office. Turns out the boys from the CDC have commandeered a number of prisoner buses. Won’t say why. Just that the buses aren’t available. When I pressed the issue, they told me, strictly off the record of course, that the CDC and FEMA and god knows who else had already commandeered the rest of the prisoner transfer buses in Cook County. Sounded to me like they’re anticipating some trouble in the evacuation. Either way, we got three buses, so we’re gonna have to do this in shifts.”

“Figures. Same old story. No help from anybody.”

“You got it, brother. Sit tight out there, and I’ll figure out who gets to ride the first merry-go-round.”

Sam didn’t bother to relay the message to the bus drivers. He didn’t want to interrupt their reading. He wandered over to one of the empty benches, sat down, closed his eyes, and turned his face to the hazy sun for a few minutes. He wished he’d brought his flask along, but he’d left it in the car.

He wondered if he could sleep if he stretched out on the warm bench. If he could just close his eyes for a while, he could pretend that the soldiers behind him, busy setting up more roadblocks along Van Buren, were actually El trains clattering along the tracks. He knew deep down that it wouldn’t work. The sound of the El trains screeching around corners and rumbling into stations was unique, and in that absence, he could never shake the feeling that armed soldiers now patrolled his city.