The Keepers by Jeffrey B. Burton

Author:Jeffrey B. Burton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER 26

“Where the hell are you guys?”

“What?” I said into my cell phone.

“You two are late. I called Kippy, but she’s not picking up,” Wabiszewski replied. “I’m at the guard’s desk in the lobby, standing here with my dick in my hand.”

“Kippy’s probably in her car with the phone in drive mode, and you’d better zip up Little Wabs before you meet with the mayor,” I said. “I got a call from the man himself an hour ago. It blew me away—the freaking mayor of Chicago calling me up. He said he wants to have a few minutes alone with each of us.”

“Why?”

“I think he wants to look us in the eye and feel us out. Gauge us, I guess, see how we come across. Mayor Weeks is taking a hell of a leap of faith bringing in the feds and, like Kippy keeps saying, we can’t be flakes. He wants to make sure we’re on the up-and-up before we meet with Special Agent Squires.”

“When the hell do you show up?”

“In half an hour. I’m at Daley Plaza sucking down a Coke and killing time with Vira.” I sat alone on a park bench. I had poured some of the soda pop over my fingertips and was letting Vira lick them clean.

Chicago City Hall is an eleven-story leviathan on North LaSalle and sits imposingly next to the Richard J. Daley and James R. Thompson Centers. As well as housing the Office of the Mayor, City Hall is also home to the offices of the City Clerk and City Treasurer, a hodgepodge of city departments, aldermen of the city’s various wards, with the City Council Chambers anchoring the building’s west side, and assorted offices of Cook County anchoring the east.

“Ah shit,” Wabs said. “I didn’t know it was going to be a fucking job interview. I was hoping to sit back and chew gum—let Kippy do all the talking. I’ve got nothing to add that she’s not already told the guy. Come early, dude.”

“Weeks sounded like a good guy on the phone,” I said. “I’ll be there soon enough, Wabs. And remember, don’t let him know you’re a flake.”

Sue, Bill, the girls, and I had been living the life of Riley in Officer Dave Wabiszewski’s surprisingly tidy townhome in Albany Park for the past five days. I’d planned my getaway to Wabiszewski’s as though the kids and I were breaking out of East Germany at the height of the Cold War. I’d parked the pickup in the yard on the far side of my trailer—making it difficult for any prying eyes, real or imagined—and chucked a couple bags of dog food and a duffel full of clothes and shower gear into the cargo bed before returning the F-150 to its natural perch in my driveway.

That took all of five minutes.

Then, hours later and under the cover of darkness, I slipped the dogs into the cab of the pickup. All but Sue appeared elated at our new adventure; however, my German shepherd

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