The Architect of Revenge: A September 11th Novel (15 page)

Morgan saw them walk from the garden to the sidewalk. One man was wearing a red baseball cap over a clump of long dreadlocks that covered broad shoulders, which ascended from a narrow waist and thicker legs. The second man, shorter and more squarely built, held a knife along the closer thigh. Both their strides lurched in synchronized rhythm.

Morgan stepped on the wet grass to get his bike, keeping them in sight.

The man with the baseball cap stopped just on the other side of the bicycle.

“What the hell?” Brosinski said while looking through the lens.

“Cool ride, motherfucker.”

The dreadlocks fell forward as the man bent down and peered through the passenger window.

“Thank you,” said Morgan calmly.

“Bet you get some finger-licking good pussy with that!”

The man stood up and put his hand on the bicycle seat.

“Not recently,” Morgan laughed, placing his left foot on the derailleur.

“Sweet bike too, asshole.”

“It’s a good one,” nodded Morgan. His left hand slowly rose to the level of the seat and turned palm up while directing a smile at the man with the knife.

“You’re like Santa Claus, motherfucker,” he said displaying his gold teeth, “bringing us such good shit, for an early Christm
-ass…
” The blade flashed. “Give my bro da’ keys to that shit.”

Brosinski continued taking pictures.

Morgan kept looking at the second man, but his head tipped away. “Your brother here’s got some cool dreads.”

The man in the baseball cap leaned over the bike to stare closer at Morgan. The dreadlocks followed.

“We taken all this shit,” he announced.

Morgan grinned broadly at the man with the knife.

Through the camera lens, Brosinski saw the smile—a peculiar facial expression during an armed robbery, and one he hadn’t expected. The automatic shutter kept cycling.

“By all means, have it,” Morgan said, reaching for the keys with his right hand.

His foot pushed the bike forward. Grabbing the dreadlocks with his left hand, Morgan yanked the man’s head down and drove his knee into his nose. The man fell backward to the ground.

Startled, the second man slipped on the wet grass. Before he could regain his balance, Morgan slammed the bicycle on him. The knife metal pinged on the sidewalk as Morgan rammed the BMW key protruding through his fist into the man’s throat. The assailant crumpled.

Morgan turned to the first man. Blinded by tears and coughing blood, he tried to stand up. Morgan spun, smashing his foot into the side of the man’s face. He dropped cold.

“Happy holidays, gentlemen,” he said, not even winded.

Morgan removed the front wheel, put the bike in the car trunk, and drove off.

“Jesus H. Christ!” shouted Brosinski. An additional thirty-two pictures were all he had taken. He grimaced as he scanned the frames several times. “Only twelve seconds?”

He looked up and saw that the BMW was gone.

“How did you know how to do that, Doc?”

Early June 2003

M
organ did several quick turns, slipping through side streets, then double parked. Leaving the motor running, he got out and crawled around the car, using his hand to examine the underside of the chassis.

He touched a small box beneath the passenger door. With a yank, the GPS dropped into his hand.

As he left the library, he had seen the Laredo. There was nothing extraordinary about it except that it was old, green, dirty—and had tinted windows. A quick circuitous bike ride confirmed that the last number on the rear license plate was the same as the one that day in Berwyn.

That meant he was tagged at the post office, and whoever was driving the Laredo already knew about the storage garage. The BMW could never go back there again.

Morgan shut off the little box and drove deeper into the South side, finally backing into a shallow dead-end alley. He cracked the window and turned off the motor to wait until rush-hour traffic was thicker.

“Thanks, guys for your help today,” Morgan said in a taciturn whisper, as if the window might broadcast his secrets. Tony and Isaac were good teachers.

His hand toyed with the GPS.

“Who’s doing this?” he wondered.

The list was short, and Morgan suspected Janie was at the top. Tenacious in her quests, it would be just like her to hire someone to find him. Once discovered, Janie would come knocking.

“You’re in for disappointment,” he said.

The BMW’s engine came to life. He drove to a public garage several miles from his home, left his car, and biked back.

That evening, a local TV station reported the special-interest story about two men who were seriously injured on the University of Chicago campus. Although their tattoos suggested they were gang members, the only man who could speak told the female reporter that he and his friend had just left church and were walking home when they were confronted by a large group of students who, without reason, mugged them.

Brosinski roared with laughter. “You have no idea, your moronic bitch!” he said at the television. He looked at the pictures again on his computer.

“Fuck, Morgan!” he said. “That’s what I call taking out the trash.”

His demeanor changed as he opened another beer. There hadn’t been a GPS signal the rest of the day.

“Damn batteries must have slipped off the contacts,” he said. “Irregardless, I’ll still find your ass.”

Morgan rode his bike to a large parking garage just off Michigan Avenue, locked it in a rack and then walked up to the building’s top floor. He turned on the GPS. After jiggling it for several minutes, he shut it off and went back to the street to wait.

“Why did that damn GPS just start working? Try missing those fuckin’ potholes, Morgan!” Brosinski groaned as the email message came through in his office. “And what the fuck are you shopping for there?”

He grabbed the keys to the Laredo.

“I’ll catch your ass if it kills me.”

Brosinski sped to the parking garage, snagged the ticket, and slowly drove behind the rows of automobiles. Morgan’s black BMW wasn’t there. A torrent of profanity escaped through his open window and was heard by two women walking to their car. Thinking the comment was meant for them, they turned and in unison gave him the finger.

“You’d be so lucky,” he yelled, accelerating toward the exit ramp.

Frustrated, Brosinski started driving the Rogers Park neighborhoods and waiting in delivery zones near intersections. If Morgan had garaged the car here, it made sense he lived somewhere nearby. His instincts were confirmed when one afternoon Morgan stopped beside the Laredo, leaned his bicycle against a wall and walked into a convenience store as the detective tried to slide down in his seat. When Morgan emerged, he stood a few feet from the front bumper drinking a pint of milk.

“Got you,” Brosinski whispered.

As Morgan rode away, Brosinski forced the Laredo into the traffic and chased his fleeting target down side streets. He finally saw Morgan shouldering his bike up some stairs and opening a door.

“Too easy!” A conceited grin waxed. “I’ll check out your place mañana when you ain’t there.” There was no need to tell Bonwitt yet. He wanted the checks to keep coming, but he needed the proof just in case.

Brosinski waited in the oppressive June air. When he was confident Morgan wasn’t home, he grabbed a grocery bag filled with newspaper balls and crowned with carrot tops and a stale loaf of French bread. After puffing up the stairs, he knocked on the door.

No answer.

He tapped again. “Hey, sugar…what gives?” He said to the wood. “Open up, baby. Brought your groceries…hope you saved some sweets for me.”

He slipped on latex gloves. The lock was easy to pick.

The dark room was stuffy. His flashlight searched the seemingly empty space.

“Don’t you fuckin’ live here?”

There were no papers or books. A cot was wedged in a corner behind a bench that was stacked with weights. There was a table with two lamps. The bicycle rested against a wall.

“Where your fuckin’ clothes?”

The closet was empty.

The kitchen cabinets, refrigerator, and microwave looked like they had never been used. There was no garbage of any kind. Brosinski walked to the bathroom.

The bathtub didn’t even have a shower curtain.

“I ain’t believing this shit,” he said and removed an ultraviolet lamp from his pocket. The special light would allow him to scour for Morgan’s prints or any DNA evidence.

“Let’s see how clean this place is, you jerk.”

There were no fingerprints on the bathroom mirror or fixtures. He kept looking. The lamp scanned the shower walls and tub.

“Didn’t you ever yank the chicken?”

There wasn’t a trace of sperm.

He looked around base of the toilet. “Well, well, well…”

Several black hairs were curled on the tile. Brosinski lifted them with tweezers into a small bottle.

“These might be useful…”

He illuminated the cot then looked underneath.

“Bingo.”

Several more hairs went into a second bottle and Brosinski stopped to listen to the nervous quiet. He knew what might happen if Morgan caught him inside. The PI wouldn’t want to pull his gun, so he left. There was nothing more to find.

Brosinski returned to his office and checked his computer. All morning long, GPS messages had plotted a path that ended in northern Wisconsin.

“What the hell are you doing up there?”

The detective entered the final coordinates—a small town west of Green Bay.

“Enough of this bullshit!”

After driving ninety miles an hour, he parked in the gravel lot of a humble one-story motel. He strode to the front desk and flashed his badge.

“Nobody by the name Morgan staying here,” said the owner’s wife. “I’m afraid we don’t get many expensive cars like BMWs.” She shook her head.

“Nothing else you remember, ma’am?” Brosinski said, proud of his professional performance, but he wasn’t about to drive his weary ass back with just that one answer. The GPS had signaled from this spot. “Maybe a BMW stopped here so the driver could use your bathroom?”

“Now that you mention it, UPS did leave a small box here at lunchtime. The address was right, but it was sent to the name
BMW Spare Parts
.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t know what to do,” she admitted, “so a bit ago my husband drove it to one of those drop boxes after writing on it: Return to the sender.”

“Which was where?” Brosinski asked, his skin flushing with anger.

“Chicago. To a Jane—”

“Aw, fuck you, Morgan!” he shouted.

The woman jumped back to avoid his spit.

“Janie, you are relentless,” Morgan said while he drove the BMW away from Chicago.

Since the beginning, even at her conniving worst, she meant well. The introduction to Caroline was proof of that. However, Janie’s persistent meddling had become a tedious distraction. Nonethe-less, this final episode pleased Morgan. From the onset, ascertaining that the Laredo’s appearances were not incidental made the entire contest with its driver a mismatch. Testing the skills Tony taught him, Morgan played aloof until his affairs in the city were concluded, and the time came for him to move on.

The white lines became unbroken as the BMW accelerated toward Morgan’s last journey to the Southwest. He glanced in the rearview mirror, his dispassionate face cleansed of emotion. As he viewed the receding skyline, nothing there mattered—all that he had once been died with Caroline that September morning.

“Cay, I love you,” he said, but would give up no more tears. The time for sentimentality was gone.

His new life would begin in the desert—the final test—one that would require absolute discipline. Tony had argued with him weeks before, insisting on providing support, but Morgan resolutely said no. He wasn’t concerned, reassuring his mentor that the small locked coolers containing the necessary stores of water and food he’d hide in the hellish landscape would not be disturbed by any two or four-legged animals. All Morgan asked was that Tony drop him off at the starting place—the below-sea-level Badwater Salts Pools—and meet him at his BMW sixty hours and one hundred thirty-six miles later at the Mount Whitney Portal.

Tony still protested.

“I’m just going for a run in Death Valley,”
said Morgan.