Dirty Martini

“It’s not me,” I said. “It’s my look. Men are suckers for big, sensuous lips.”

It came out sensubus libs.

Reynolds raised an eyebrow-well, the right half of his unibrow.

“Actually, I think you’re one of the bravest women I’ve ever met.”

“Thanks. And thanks for watching my back.”

We exchanged a meaningless mutual admiration society glance.

“Where to now?” he asked. “Back to your District?”

“The Daley Center. My car.”

Reynolds told the cabbie, and I called Superintendent O’Loughlin, and ran through the list of wedding possibilities.

“Four teams,” I told her. “We’ll need to check food and drinks, search for traps, interview staff for anything out of the ordinary, and if needed, confiscate everything.”

“That will piss some people off,” she said.

“Not as much as their entire guest list keeling over. We’ll make the two-six the base of operations. The conference room. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“Meet you there.”

“Good. I want my guns back.” I hung up and nudged Reynolds. “Round up your team and as many cops as you can find.” He got on the radio, and I called the Crime Lab. Officer Hajek wasn’t in, but a cop I knew named Dan Rogers was.

“I need four CSUs, fully loaded, at the two-six, thirty minutes.”

“I’ve only got four guys here.”

“You’ve also got a phone. Get more. The superintendent is authorizing the overtime.”

“She is?”

“She will. Haul ass.”

The cab dropped me off, and I drove back to my District. The exterminators had been replaced by a HazMat team, cleaning up the poison in the Records room. Maybe it was oversensitivity on my part, but I could swear the entire building smelled like acrid chemicals, and I tried not to breathe much when I took the elevator to the second floor. The staircase and the bathroom I’d used to wash off the TEPP were being decontaminated, so I had to use the bathroom at the other end of the hallway.

I spent ten full minutes washing off blood and dirt. My mouth was puffy. My hair was a bird’s nest. I’d sweated through my jacket, and ripped the shoulder. In short, I looked like I died yesterday but no one had bothered to inform me. Reynolds was the brave one, hitting on me when I was like this. Maybe he didn’t like bravery so much as he liked scary.

I didn’t feel much better than I looked. I found Advil in my purse, popped three, then combed the knots out of my hair and used half a tube of thirty-dollar lipstick to try to cover up the lip injury. I inadvertently called attention to it instead, like painting a football red. I went a little heavy on the mascara to compete with it, some rouge to highlight my cheeks, and the next thing I knew, I looked like a hooker. A hooker with bad hair who just got her ass kicked.

Fine. No makeup. I scrubbed it all off.

Then I put just a touch back on.

After making myself appear somewhat human, I went to the water fountain and drank like a camel-not the easiest thing to do with a fat lip, but the cold water felt nice. I had a brief spell of double vision, worked through it, and then showed up in Conference Room A to talk with forty-plus cops, Feds, and others, including the folks from the CDC, USAMRIID, and WHO.

My speech wasn’t particularly inspiring, witty, or even pithy. But I made up for all of that by being brief.

“I recently spoke with the Chemist. There are four high-profile wedding receptions taking place in Chicago today, and if we’re to take him at his word, he’s poisoned the refreshments at one of them. We need to shut all four of them down until we can figure out which one is the deadly one. I need four teams. Each will have a Crime Scene Unit with full gear, an SRT to check for booby traps and IEDs, and as many officers as we can spare to interview the staff. If possible, let’s get in touch with the wedding parties, ask them if anything unusual has happened in the last few days or weeks.”

Rogers raised his hand. “How can we test for toxins or poisons in the field? We need to take samples to the lab, run them through the GCMS. There will be hundreds of samples.”

“Our guy is touchy about leaving fingerprints. Look for things that have been wiped down, or for glove marks. People at the distillery, distributors, busboys, bartenders, servers, managers-they all leave their latents on bottles of booze. Any bottle that’s clean should be given top priority.”

I spied Rick sneaking into the room and sitting near the back.

“Special Agent Rick Reilly from the Hazardous Materials Response Team of the FBI has worked closely with the Behavioral Science Team to create a profile of the Chemist. This profile states that since he’s been paid, he will no longer have any interest in harming our city. Is that right, Special Agent?”

Rick stood. “That’s right. The Chemist is probably on his way out of the country right now. We’ve got teams at bus stations and airports-”

“Looking for a soaking wet man carrying a yellow bag,” I interrupted. “The FBI profile is flat-out wrong, and I don’t want anyone wasting their time with it. The Chemist is still in town. He’s going to try to be at the reception. Maybe as a guest or an employee. Maybe he’ll just watch from across the street. But he’ll want to see it. I’ll need people double-checking the guest lists, new hires, anyone hanging around who shouldn’t be there, plus SRT members to run recon on the locations, to see if anyone is playing I Spy.”

“The profile-” Rick said.

I finished for him. “Sucks. Rogers, Reynolds, divide up your people. Baker, put the teams together. Everyone extra, go where you think you can do some good. I want everyone on headsets. Alpha Team has the Cubs catcher-Baker, you’re in charge. Taylor, you’re leading Bravo Team, and you’ve got the Kent wedding. Charlie Team is Corndog Watkins-Collins, that’s you. I’m heading up Delta and the Bains reception. Keep in touch, keep communicating, and if we find the Chemist, I don’t want to hear any bullshit about letting the guy go.”

Davy Ellis, looking like he’d just stepped off the Ralph Lauren runway, raised his hand.

“The mayor said-”

“The mayor said not to apprehend him during the money drop. The drop is over. Isn’t that right, Superintendent O’Loughlin?”

All eyes locked on the super. Her voice radiated a lot more authority than mine did.

“If we find him, we grab him.”

I adjourned the meeting, and began to work with Baker putting teams together. Rick came up, his pretty-boy looks spoiled by a scowl. He took my elbow and edged me aside.

“Not very professional, Jack.”

“About as professional as telling the super to take my gun.”

“You were going to do something stupid.”

At least he didn’t deny it. But that didn’t make it any less of a betrayal.

“I do a lot of stupid things,” I told him, and let my eyes add extra weight to my words. Rick caught the implication and walked off. There would be no more footsie with Special Agent Hottie. Good-looking men were nice, but loyalty was a helluva lot nicer.

After my team was organized enough to roll, I tracked down the super, who was in a heated discussion with the PR guy.

“I need my weapons,” I said to her.

O’Loughlin reached into her enormous jacket pockets, pockets so large they belonged on a clown or a mime.

“If you apprehend or kill the suspect,” Davy said, “it could get out that the city knew about his plot, and that we paid him off. Think about the outrage, the lawsuits, the damage to Chicago’s reputation.”

“All I’m thinking about,” I said evenly, “is getting him so more people don’t die.”

“It would be impossible to recover from-”

“I forgot to mention,” I interrupted. “The last time I spoke with the Chemist, he asked me why we hadn’t gone public about the money. I told him to take it up with Davy Ellis of Ellis, Dickler, and Scaramouche, that you were the one suppressing his story. He didn’t seem happy.”