“Fuck it,” I muttered.
And aimed the nine mil and fired.
The report was a thundercrack—even an El rumbling by couldn’t blot it out.
The bullet hit the jumper in the back, in mid-flight, and he dropped from sight, between buildings, his scream following him all the way down.
I sighed.
Got to my feet, slowly, shaking my head the same way.
“Probably won’t have much to say for himself,” I said to nobody.
As the shriek of an approaching ambulance belatedly echoed the falling man’s scream, I only hoped his target, Roger Freemont, would be luckier.
TEN
The last time I’d visited Cook County Memorial it had been to stop by the morgue to view a couple of corpses.
As pale as the unconscious Roger Freemont looked in his hospital bed, hooked up to an IV, a nearby heart monitor blipping, this trip didn’t feel all that different.
He hadn’t told me, before the bullet interrupted, but I knew. I knew that, after Mike’s death, Roger had exaggerated his already gruff exterior to honor his late friend’s wishes and pursue a sub rosa investigation, while keeping the little lady in the dark.
I leaned in at his bedside and told the impassive face, oddly vulnerable without the dark-rimmed glasses, “You have to pull through, Roger—the guy who did this to you didn’t. And you know me—I do have questions....”
This was a room for two, but the bed next to Roger’s was empty, the dividing curtain drawn back. Patients came and went quickly on the Intensive Care floor.
I exited Roger’s room and, in the corridor right outside, found Rafe Valer and Chic Steele milling, both looking as anxious as expectant fathers, although this was the other end of that spectrum.
With Rafe’s black trenchcoat, Chic’s tan one and my dark blue, we looked like a detective convention. Maybe we were due a meeting at that.
Rafe’s eyes flew to mine as he asked, “Talk to Roger’s doctor yet, Michael?”
I nodded. “Touch and go.”
Face clenched like a fist, Chic said, “Tell me Roge isn’t in a coma.”
“He’s not.”
Both men were visibly relieved, but their heads were hanging.
I went on: “He’s sleeping, sedated. Hasn’t said anything. But he will. He will.”
Rafe offered up a humorless smirk. “For a dead guy, the hitter you popped told us a lot.”
“Oh?”
Chic picked up the thread: “Guy had definite ties to the old Muerta mob.”
I felt a spike of excitement. “Is this the link we’ve been looking for, finally?”
Chic shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Chic held up a “take it easy” palm. “Ties to the Muerta family he definitely had, yes...but going back a lot of years—nothing connecting him to them since, hell, since Mike and me took Dominic Muerta out of the picture, and this new generation stepped in. Still...” His eyes went to Rafe. “...I may owe you an apology.”
“Yeah?” Rafe said.
“Maybe there is something to your ‘Event Planner’ notion.”
I said to both of them, “If so, then where does Dominique Muerta fit in? Like father, like daughter?”
Chic frowned. “You need to stay away from her, Ms. Tree.”
I summoned the most withering smile I had in me, and I have a few. I said to the man I’d been sleeping with for months now, “Call me Michael.”
But Rafe surprised me. He was shaking his head, saying, “Chic’s right—if the daughter really is as legitimate as she looks, with that company’s high-powered attorneys? You’ll put everything at risk.”
“Define everything.”
“Okay. How about the Tree Agency?”
“And if Muerta’s darling daughter is not legit?”
“Yourself,” Rafe said. “At risk.”
I mulled that a moment, then said, “So far today I shot off a redneck’s kneecap, and caught a hitman on the fly with a single shot.” I mock shivered. “Sure would hate to have my afternoon turn risky, all of a sudden.”
Rafe looked at Chic.
Chic looked at Rafe.
“Afternoon, fellas,” I said, and gave them a pleasant nod, and was off down the corridor.
I must have passed Dan without even noticing him, because suddenly I heard his voice behind me, saying to the two cops: “What did I miss?”
“Just your boss going mildly psychotic on us,” Rafe said.
“And?” Dan said.
They didn’t know I’d heard, and didn’t see my smile as I pressed the DOWN button at the elevator.
“Your behavior is starting to show reckless tendencies,” the doctor said.
“Don’t worry, Doc,” I said. “I’m not suicidal.”
“And yet you intended to beard Dominique Muerta in her own den?”
“No. She’d look ridiculous in a beard—okay, bad joke. But, Doc, the one place in this town where I’m not in real danger is Muerta Enterprises HQ.”
“And why is that?”
“They have a reputation to uphold...but then so do I.”
Muerta Enterprises International had its own building, a modern slab of stone and glass and steel on Wacker Drive with a gigantic abstract metal statue out front that might have been a dancer. I stood looking up, trying without any luck to see where the building ended and the sky began.
It took some sneaking around to avoid going through such channels as signing in with the receptionist, or waiting with a roomful of people whose attire was divided fairly evenly between Business Severe and Show Biz Chic.
But on the pretense of needing a ladies’ room, and knowing right where I was going thanks to some intel I squeezed out of Rafe Valer, I managed to enter the outer office of the CEO, without incident.
Within, I found a painfully handsome redheaded young man in a cream-color Armani ensemble with an orange silk tie, seated at an L-shaped blond desk, swiveled to face his keyboard and flat screen. His workstation was barren of any paperwork—he was a keeper of the keys, sentry not secretary.
Whatever the hell he was, he had an office area almost as large as my own at the Tree Agency, though this chamber with its parquet floor and deco-design area rug was home to no chairs other than the young man’s.
This was not a waiting room—by the time you made it this far, you were ready to be ushered in. The light lavender walls were adorned, sparingly, with large, almost poster-size framed photographs of household-name recording artists and actors, all smiling for the camera in a manner that came off collectively as crazed. A blond hutch matching the desk displayed some awards—including Oscars and Emmys—and a similar bookcase was home to annual industry publications.
The redheaded gatekeeper rolled on his brown leather chair from the flat screen to the other wing of his desk to look up at me with polite patience. He had lovely blue eyes and a moist, sensual mouth that a starlet would have killed for, or anyway braved Botox to attain.
“I’m sorry?” he said, in a midrange voice that was somehow simultaneously gentle and accusing.
What “I’m sorry” meant was, if I was standing before him right now, as I seemed to be, he should, he would, have known about it. He’d have been called by someone less important than him but probably more important than me.
“Michael Tree for Dominique Muerta,” I said.
He didn’t even check a book or use the phone. “You don’t have an appointment.”
“No, but she’ll see me.”
He remained polite, if icily so. “I’m afraid it’s impossible for you to see Ms. Muerta without an appointment.”