“Looks like a Malibu,” said Bernstein. “One of the new ones.”

“Yeah,” said Lynch. “What’s that white spot on the windshield? Some kind of sticker?”

Lynch called the IT guy who had pulled the photos, gave him the ID number on the shot. The IT guy blew it up on his screen. He couldn’t get a lot of resolution, but he told Lynch it looked like one of the barcode stickers some of the rental car companies put on the windshields of their stock. Lynch asked him to run through any photos they had around the stadium a half-mile in every direction for the ten minutes before and the ten minutes after the first and last shots of the car, and get him the plate number of every gray Malibu – bonus points if it had the white sticker. Guy said he would, but it was going to take a day or so.

Lynch was about to grab some coffee when the desk sergeant called up from downstairs.

“Got an Ashley Urra here to see you. Says you talked to her out at the UC on the Stein thing?”

“OK,” said Lynch. “Send her up.”

Urra was less made up, her hair in a ponytail, wearing jeans and a Blackhawks jersey that was too big on her. It hung down off one shoulder, showing the strap to a running bra. Still perky. She sat in the chair next to Lynch’s desk. Bernstein rolled his chair around.

“So, Ms Urra. What can I do for you?”

“It’s about that man from Abe’s box – the one I thought I remembered? I saw him again today.”

Lynch sat up in his chair. “Where?”

“On TV. He was on Oprah. Well, not on Oprah, but on a clip they ran.”

“What?”

“You know Shamus Fenn is in town, right, shooting that film? Well, he was on Oprah, her Oscar special thing? They were talking about the child abuse stuff with him? You remember, that came out a few years ago? And they showed a clip from that big charity party they had in Africa from back then? When he got in a fight with that guy?”

Lynch had a vague recollection – some stupid drunk celebrity shit. “Yeah, OK, I remember that.”

“The guy from the box? He was the one who got in the fight with Seamus Fenn. That’s where I’d seen him. I mean I was in high school, but that video was all over the place back then.”

Jesus, thought Lynch. I got a dead zillionaire, a dead one-armed refugee, and now some mystery guest at an African charity party who got in a punch up with a movie star – and both him and the movie star are in town?

“The other guy,” Lynch asked, “they mention his name?”

“I wrote it down. Nick Hardin. They said his name was Nick Hardin.”

CHAPTER 16

Hardin knew he had to move, had to get out of town, get some space. He also needed to get off the grid. Somebody had gotten a line on him somehow, so he had to figure the Nigel Fox ID was shot. Hardin had found Nigel dead in his apartment three months back, the booze finally catching up with him. And Nigel’s passport and ID were just sitting there on his table. Date on the passport made Nigel fifty-four – Hardin would have figured he was sixty-five at least, but that’s what pickling your liver will do for you. Height and weight were about the same. He knew a guy who could swap the pictures out, and with Hardin’s gray hair, he could be a young fifty-four. Always nice to have a spare set of papers, and he didn’t figure Nigel would mind.

Nigel had gotten him this far, but from here out, Hardin was on his own.

Hardin drove the Marquis back up to the Loop. Found a metered spot on Columbus, behind the Art Institute. He dumped the Mercury there, walked to the garage, drove his rental back to O’Hare and turned it in, grabbed the L back downtown, then jumped on the Burlington commuter rail out to Aurora. Going home.

Hardin wasn’t Hardin when he joined the Legion. He was Mike Griffin. He was home on leave at the end of his second hitch in the Marines, ready to re-up, on the road to being a lifer. It was a few weeks before Christmas. He’d hooked up with his best friend from high school, Esteban Sandoval, and they were heading out to celebrate Esteban’s kid sister’s twenty-first birthday. Hardin had always been close to Juanita in a big brother kind of way. He knew she chafed a little at the whole macho Mexican culture thing, the limited expectations. She used to talk to him sometimes, and she’d written him pretty steadily while he was in the Corps. The last time he’d seen her was her high school graduation, three years back, it kind of hitting him out of the blue what a looker she was turning into, and her giving him a hug when he left that felt like something other than just goodbye. And she’d opened up a lot in her letters since then. Him too, really, going back and forth about some things he’d never gotten into with anybody else.

And now here she was, walking out with Esteban, and damn. He didn’t know what it was exactly, that line where someone’s a kid on one side of it and she’s a woman on the other. But she’d crossed it.

Griffin had plenty of dough saved from the Corps, there not being much to spend it on over in Sandland, so he was playing big shot. Dinner at Red Lobster out at the mall, and then the old Toyota dealership on New York Street that some guy’d made into a dance club. Juanita was turning some heads. Fuck that, she was turning all of them. And Griffin was falling for her. The first slow dance came on, Esteban clinched up with a girl he’d been working on since they arrived. Griffin stepped back, letting Juanita take the lead, to see if she wanted to stay out for the dance or sit it out. She took his hand, pulled him to her, and he held her as you held a woman. He felt the way she fit against him, and he wanted to say something, felt like he should say something. But she felt graceful and true in his arms and any words he thought to say seemed awkward and false. So he just held her and swayed to the music, his hand moving slowly up and down on her bare back, her backless dress open almost to her waist, hoping that the feeling of his hand on her skin was saying whatever he could not. Then he felt her lips brush against his neck as she stretched up for a minute on her toes, her mouth now right next to his ear, and she said, “I know. Me too.”

Halfway through the night, on the way to the men’s room, he told Esteban. “I think I’m getting a little thing for your sister, man. Maybe a big thing.”

Esteban grinned, slapped him on the shoulder. “Fuck, man, you just figuring that out? You two, you been a thing for a while. Better you than most of the scum in the neighborhood, dude. You gonna be a gentleman, right?”

“Part of the Marine code, hombre.”

They danced, they drank – it was the best night Griffin had had in a long time. Best night he’d had, period.

At closing time, Griffin, Esteban, and Juanita were walking out to the car. Halfway across the lot, a stretch Caddy cut them off. Tiny Hernandez and two of his goons got out. Griffin knew Hernandez ran the Latin Kings on the east side of Aurora. He was also the younger brother of Jamie Hernandez, who was a major dealer. Tiny looked like a human cement block – six feet tall, six feet thick, a flat, feral face on a stump neck.

“I been watching you, mamacita,” he said to Juanita. “You like the finest thing ever been in that dump. I’m gonna take you out, show you where the real players hang.”

“I’m not anybody’s mamacita,” Juanita said.

“Thanks for the offer, sport,” said Griffin. “But I don’t think she wants to go.”

“You got shit in your ears? I didn’t ask. Puta like that, she don’t know what she wants. Not till I give it to her.” Hernandez’s goons got a chuckle out of that.

Griffin caught the look from Esteban – no way was his sister getting in that car. And nothing good was going to come of waiting for the other side to make a move. Esteban yelled for Juanita to get inside, put his shoulder down and drove into the goon on the right – catching him in the gut, driving him back against the Caddy, hard. Griffin feinted toward Tiny, knowing the other goon would rush to help. Then he planted, turned and put the stiffened fingers of his right hand into the guy’s throat. Felt something crumple, guy’s trachea if he’d done it right. The way the guy went down, Griffin figured he was on his way to dead.