Lynch had read it wrong, figured it was a temporary deal, figured it would calm down. It hadn’t. Johnson was playing in a different league now. It wasn’t just the book. She was smart, beautiful – the Hastings case had put her on the radar, but she had the chops to stay on it. The Trib was pretty much a part-time gig now. TV was the big thing. And TV, for a political reporter, meant Washington, meant New York. Chicago was flyover country.

Lynch knew she was working at it, spending more time in town than was good for her, probably. And shit, she’d won the media lottery, it’s not like he expected her to give it all up. Nobody’s fault, nothing to be done about it. Didn’t mean he had to like it.

Lynch had a couple tickets to the Hawks game for tomorrow night – Minnesota in town, and Johnson being a Minneapolis girl, she liked her hockey. It was going to be a surprise. Took his phone back up, dug up Dickey Reagan’s number, reporter at the Sun-Times Lynch went way back with. Dickey was a hockey guy. Lynch figured he throw Dickey a bone, stay on his good side.

Bernstein worked the phone all the way back to the station, getting background on Hardin while Lynch turned the facts over in his head. The body count was now four: three with .22s, one with a ballpoint. He had a rich trader, an African refugee, and two mob soldiers. On top of that, he had a witness that put Hardin in Stein’s box right before the first killing, and now he had a video that tied Hardin to a movie star who happened to be in town. The only other time the two of them had been in the same place at the same time, far as anyone knew, was five years ago in Africa, and the two of them had gone at it then. This Membe guy was from Africa, but better than a thousand miles from Darfur. What’s that song from that kid’s show? “One of these things is not like the other?” Christ, Lynch would be happy if any of these things had anything to do with anything. This was like a goddamn random clue generator or something.

CHAPTER 18

Lynch and Bernstein sat in Starshak’s office, Starshak up futzing with the giant fern that hung in his window.

“What you got on this Hardin, Bernstein?”

“French national,” Bernstein said. “For a good stretch, he worked as a sort of logistics and security guy for news crews doing stories in Africa. That’s how he got involved with Jerry Mooney. Met him at some point, ended up as his right-hand man, pretty much set up that whole Dollars for Darfur thing for him. That’s when he got into that punch-up with Shamus Fenn, not much on him since. Couple of people I talked to said maybe he came out of the Foreign Legion – nobody remembers him saying it, it was just what people heard.

“Anyway, I checked the airlines. This Hardin flew Air France out of Casablanca three days ago – Casablanca to Kennedy, connection on United to Chicago. The flight landed just after 10am the day Stein got shot. I checked the car rental places, working on the hotels, but it doesn’t look like he’s used the Hardin ID since he got to town. So either he brought a pile of cash with him or he’s got another ID.”

“Gotta have some kind of ID,” said Lynch. “Can’t even rent a hotel room without one.”

“So maybe something he can flash for a hotel, but that he didn’t trust enough to get him through an airport?” said Bernstein.

“Makes sense,” said Starshak. “Either way, we’ve got an Air France pen in the mob guy’s neck. You said he was on Air France.”

“Yeah,” said Lynch. “Listen, we got his arrival time at O’Hare and we got his picture. Get that to the techies, he’s got to be on video at the airport, right? Track him out, see does he rent a car, does somebody pick him up, does he take the L, or what.”

“That gives us a place to start,” said Starshak. “Pretty clear he came here to see Stein. Any thoughts there?”

“He must have had something to sell, all I can think of,” said Bernstein. “Stein’s got his fingers in a lot of pies. Lots of commodities in Africa, lots of shady deals. If Hardin had the right dope on something, Stein could pony up pretty good for it.”

Lynch’s cell rang. He checked the screen. McCord. “Yeah?” said Lynch.

“You remember the dirt on Stein’s pants; I told you we’d check it out?”

“Yeah,” said Lynch.

“OK, first off, this is actual dirt, soil of some kind. When we get something here that looks like dirt, usually it’s pollution; road salt, urban grime. So this being actual dirt seemed a little strange. First of all, it’s fresh. Not worked into the fabric all that deep and it’s not like Stein couldn’t afford to get his suits cleaned. Gotta figure he got it on him that night, so that’s weird cause there ain’t much loose dirt around the United Center. And the weather the last few days, what dirt we got is frozen solid. Second, being actual dirt, it’s got geological properties that can tie it to a location. Thing is, this wasn’t our usual nice Midwestern sediment. This shit was funky. I had to ship it over to a geology guy at UIC. I’ll send you all the fun science – stuff about alluvial deposits and riverine something or another – but bottom line is this: the dirt’s from West Africa. And this dirt-specialist guy, he had an interesting question. He wanted to know had anybody brought up diamonds. Said this type of dirt is consistent with the geology around West African diamond deposits.”

“Diamonds?” Lynch asked.

“Yep,” said McCord.

Lynch hung up the phone, filled in Starshak and Bernstein.

“So diamonds from West Africa, which is where this Hardin just came from,” said Starshak.

“Yeah,” said Lynch.

“And we have this Membe guy, also from there, who maybe had his hand lopped off for stealing diamonds,” said Bernstein.

“Yeah,” said Lynch. “Kinda feels like an actual lead.”

CHAPTER 19

Munroe stifled a yawn, popped a go pill and looked out his hotel window across Michigan Avenue and Grant Park at Lake Michigan. Needed about ten hours sleep, but the go pill would take care of that. Jet lag was for pussies who hadn’t been shot much.

Munroe hated Chicago. His first time had been during the convention in 1968 a few years after he’d officially crossed over to the dark side. Got lent out to track down a Soviet agent provocateur who had been whispering unpleasant ideas into the Yippies’ ears, been teaching them to blow shit up. The Chicago cops found that guy bobbing in the lake, bouncing off the breakwater by the Planetarium, bump on his head. They wrote him off as some stoned fuck who didn’t know that getting high and going for a swim didn’t mix.

Next day, Munroe was out of his hippie mufti, back in his Brooks Brothers, trying to flag a cab out of town, when some long-hair pelted him with an open baggie full of human shit. Shouldn’t blame the city, he supposed, but the whole exercise left a bad taste in his mouth. And, of course, there was Hurley the First: classless troglodyte every bit as venal and ham-fisted as any third world thug Munroe had ever had to make nice with. Kind of guy that made you wonder if you were really on the right side.

But the new Hurley? At least this guy loved his cameras.

Munroe was scrolling through a slide show of al Din shots the tech boys had pulled together for him. Pretty clear that al Din knew about the cameras, too, and understood there was no way he could stay off them, so he did the next best thing. He stuck his mug in front of every camera he could find. North side, south side, west side – if there was a camera, al Din was on it. Suburbs weren’t wired up, not like the city, but al Din was doing his level best to pop up out there, too. Mall security, ATMs. If Munroe was going to piece together al Din’s play based on video footage, al Din was not going to make it easy.