Gene promised a shitload of backup, so they could cordon off the entire area for six blocks. But Tanith cautioned any sirens, and any big show of force. “You'd just alert him to the fact we're on to him.”
“How can you be on to him if you don't know where the fuck he is?” countered Kelley.
“Given the nature of the beast, innocent lives could be put at risk if you come rushing in like the cavalry, Gene. Look, I think he went south on Michigan. I'm going to do what I can to get and keep a visual on him. But no helicopters or guys rappelling down on the avenue unless they can stay out of his sight.”
“You go cautiously, Slick.”
“I talked to him, Gene. He's a cool customer. Didn't spook, but then he was convinced I was Barney the Street-Wise salesman. He had no idea who I was.”
“We've all got his likeness now. You were out when it was disseminated. We all know what the guy looks like.”
“So do I… now.” She spotted him in the crowd ahead. She'd jogged, stopping only to talk to Gene. “My God, I got a visual on him!”
“Where's he headed?”
“I dunno. The Tribune tower maybe?”
“What, to give himself up?”“Could be.”
“Keep your eyes on him.”
“Wait… where'd he go? Shit… disappeared like smoke. Stepped into a shop doorway or down a side street.”
“He may be on to you. Don't take another step. We're on our way.”
Two squad cars converged on her location, followed by Gene's unmarked sedan used in backing her up in the park. All the uniformed cops spread out with the caveat to locate Giles Gahran, each with a photo in hand. Gene put a big arm around Tanith. “How's my lady love, Slick?” He'd begun using the nickname shortly after their first partnering.
“Slick is just fine, but damn I really wanted this guy.” She carefully pulled out the note she'd lifted from the unattended box. “You think the way I got hold of this it'll stand up in a court of law?” She held it out between thumb and forefinger, gingerly, when a Chicago gust stole it away, sending her chasing after it.
“Fuck!” The document seemed as elusive as Gahran. It took Gene stomping on it, dirtying it badly, to stop it from completely blowing off.
“You got hold of the FBI?” she asked.
“They got word, yeah. All nine yards of it. Couple of their agents from Milwaukee've been canvassing and scouring the city for Gahran. Imagine it, Slick, this freak that rips out people's goddamn spines.”
“So you tell 'em about the note?”
“Yeah.”
“And the news that this guy is… or may be related to Mad Matthew Matisak, the creep caught here in Chicago like a decade ago and put away and escaped and finally brought down in New Orleans?”
“I relayed all of it, Slick, all of it.”
“Then why in hell aren't they all over this? Where the fuck are they?”
“Apparently, they've run down an apartment house where he's staying. They're sitting on it.”
“A stakeout?”
“Waiting, yeah, for a damn warrant for search and seizure, all ready to make an arrest if and when he shows.”
Another unmarked car arrived, and a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome FBI agent who introduced himself as Laughlin made long eye contact with Chen in her sweats. “You're the one with the weird story of having run into Giles Gahran, and is that the document you found?”
She looked down at the soiled note, the stains now smeared across the ink lettering. Agent Laughlin said, “Looks like an old Underwood style typewriter. But our boys and girls at the lab'll know soon enough. They're trained on this kind of thing.”
“Sorry about the mess we made of it,” she apologized.
“Don't worry. We've managed around a lot worse.” He read the note and his face went ashen, two shades lighter.
“You all right, Agent Laughlin?” she asked.
“This is what I call the true nature of evil.”
“A real Mommie Dearest story in it, that's for sure.”
“Look… it appears you all have lost sight of him, and our best chance now is to catch him at the rental, and Petersaul and Cates have that covered, so… how 'bout if…”
Gene instinctively read her body language that told him to disappear.
“Yes, Agent?”
“Well, I mean… have you had a bite? There's a great restaurant-Joe's Chicago just a couple blocks up back of the Marriott. Best of Chicago.”
“Oh, yeah, great place across from the… yeah… I am famished after all that's happened.”
“I'll get your stuff outta the park if none of the real bums have stolen it already,” Gene called to her. Gene signaled tothe uniforms moving from storefront to storefront on the most protected mile of real estate in the city that they were done here.
The police presence disappeared as quickly as it had materialized.
GILES Gahran had insisted he be allowed to take his box up on the enormous shining Ferris wheel with him. The operator argued that he'd be happy to set it aside and hold it in a safe place until his return. It took an additional twenty to show the man how seriously Giles wanted to take the box on the ride.
“Look man, I got no metal detectors here. I can't know what the fuck is in that box. And never in life ever seeing a box like that. You say it's just photos and papers, stuff important only to you, but how am I to know you ain't got something, you know, sinister in the box. And even if you don't got something, you know, like that in there, I got people I gotta answer to and I need this job. You got no idea.”
“Look,” Giles directed his eyes to the box. Giles shuffled his hand through all the papers. Just paper. Feel how light.”
The operator waved him off. “Yeah… OK… I can see it ain't nothing but paper, but still the rule is nothing carried on, not even a friggin' umbrella even, not even if it looks like rain, you know, 'cause if something fell off, it's a damn instant projectile, you see my drift?”
Giles slipped in another forty atop the twenty.
The operator glanced around. Finally, he nodded, a cigar bobbing in his mouth. “OK, but you gotta promise to keep that thing from falling. It falls out, you could hurt somebody at such heights, you know. Don't matter how light it is.”
Giles got aboard the car with the box. He'd had to again untie it to demonstrate its harmlessness to the fool, and now he could not place it on his lap because of the bar placed across his front. From his coat pocket, he pulled forth the Spigot-his father's blood-draining device-and replaced it in the box.
“The wheel's so damn big, it only goes around once, you know? Don't want any complaints,” the operator said in a monotone that spoke of an eternal boredom. And so the ride began.
The operator moved Giles and his cargo by increments as he let off others who had already made the trip to the top, carefully monitoring weight and balance as he did so. Giles's trip to the stars was stop-start, stop-start, not the smooth ride he'd expected, and it didn't allow for any sensation of flight to occur. Rather for Giles, the box of the gondola gave him the sensation of being inside the box he carried on with him.
Finally, he arrived near the top of the mammoth arc. Held here as the operator far below now continued his endless quest of balance, counterweight, balance, counterweight, working now with people at Giles's extreme opposite as new arrivals boarded.
Then the gondola lurched, and Giles's box slid from the seat beside him, spilling onto the footrest, clippings and photos threatening to spill over the side, along with the glass-and-metal contraption his father's patent papers had referred to as the Spigot.
Giles knee-jerk response had him reach for the box, and in lurching forward, the gondola swung wildly beneath him, and one of the news clippings scuttled over the side. Unable to grab the box, the Spigot or the papers, his arm and body held in check by the bar, Giles watched the devilish wind whip in and dance around the papers, flirting with the papers as they continued to move snakelike from the spilled box. “Fuck, fuck, fucking hell! Is this how you want it, Mother? Is this what we've been waiting for?”