People love to write books about dive bars in Chicago. They usually describe a place with Old Style in cans, hard booze in gallon jugs, and a jukebox that still takes quarters. There’s a wrinkled old man drinking behind the counter, and six or seven regulars who have an unwritten set of rules about how to act if you’re gonna sit at their bar. People like these places. Like to search them out, have a beer, and then brag about it to their friends. Maybe they feel like they’re slumming. But they’re not. If you want to slum, belly up to the bar at Little Kings Liquors on the South Side of Chicago. If you own a gun, it wouldn’t be a half-bad idea to bring that along as well.
I got there at a little after seven. The place looked like it always looked—a collection of mismatched plywood and rusty nails, creaking in the wind at the corner of Fifty-seventh and State. A handful of parole violators were hanging around outside. Inside, a man named Deke tended bar. Deke was the color of stale dust and the width of a matchstick. He sat on a stool, eating greasy food from a white carton and sipping on a glass of something dark. Between Deke and his customers a run of chicken wire spanned the length of the bar and rose all the way to the ceiling. It seemed a bit over the top, until you saw the customers. Or, rather, didn’t. Little Kings was a bar full of dark corners. Most everyone who drank there sat in one. You could map the place by the glow of a cigarette, rasp of a cough, or scuff of a shoe on the scarred linoleum.
“What’re you drinking?” Deke said.
I hadn’t been in the place in five years. In Little Kings’ time, I might as well have just gone to the can.
“Jack and Coke.”
Deke assembled the drink in short, quick strokes and slipped it through a hole in the fence. I took a sip and sighed. Deke was still there, watching.
“What?” I said.
“You send a white woman in here?”
“Where is she?”
Deke jerked his chin toward his shoulder. “I got her in the back. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Sorry, Deke. I was supposed to get here before her.”
Deke shook his head, walked to the far end of the bar, and disappeared. He came back a minute later with Ellen Brazile, low heels tapping out the absurdity of her presence there. She took a seat beside me. I could feel every eye in the place on us and slipped my gun onto the bar.
“I asked to use the bathroom, Michael.”
“How was it?”
“They had to buzz me in from behind the bar.”
“Sorry. I thought I’d get here before you. Want something?”
She ordered a drink and took a tentative sip. “You come here a lot?”
“No one will bother us.”
“Really?”
I looked around. Little Kings was probably the only place in Chicago where they weren’t discussing the end of time and space. First, there were no TVs in the place. Second, no one much gave a damn what sort of global meltdown might be unfolding on the West Side. The folks who frequented Little Kings were up to their elbows in death on a daily basis. The fact that the rest of the world was just considering its own mortality was not their problem. Unless, of course, there was a buck to be made.
“Come on, let’s sit over here.”
There was one small table, close to the front door and under the only window in the place. I left my gun out. Ellen placed a black bag at her feet and took a quick glance around. “I thought smoking in bars was illegal.”
There were maybe seven cigarettes burning up the darkness around us.
“They bend the rules in here. You want to light up?”
“Yes.” She pulled out a pack and shook out a couple. I took a pass.
“Thanks for meeting me,” she said.
“Thanks for tipping me about the cameras at Cook.”
Ellen lit a cigarette and began to weave her web of smoke. “Did they follow you from the hospital?”
“Things are fine. For now, anyway.”
She nodded. A man in a gray overcoat came in. He dragged his left foot when he walked and took a seat at the bar. Besides us, he was the only white person I’d ever seen in the place.
“How did you manage to get out of CDA without an escort?” I said.
“It wasn’t easy.”
I slipped my hand closer to my gun. The man with the limp ordered a drink from Deke and stared at the run of chicken wire.
“Molly didn’t think you’d make it,” I said.
Ellen’s eyes snapped at mine. “Did you tell her we were coming here?”
“No, why?”
“I don’t want her involved.”
“Involved in what?”
Ellen jostled the ice cubes in her glass with a straw. “Do you know Jon Stoddard?”
“Your boss?”
“I had a chat with him this afternoon. Told him I’d cracked the bug.” She pushed at the black bag with her toe. “It’s all right here. Entire DNA blueprint of the Chicago pathogen.”
I glanced at the bag. “I hope you left copies at the lab.”
“Molly’s got everything she needs to replicate what I’ve done.”
“And why are you telling me all this?”
Ellen crushed her cigarette into a plastic ashtray and took a sip of her drink. When she spoke again, she leaned into her words, like she was whispering into a wooden screen and I was wearing a white collar on the other side.
“Two years ago, I created a bioweapon called Minor Roar.”
“Let me guess. It somehow escaped from your lab and is now killing people by the dozen over on the West Side?”
“If Minor Roar had been released in its original form, the total number of dead would already be in the thousands. Maybe tens of thousands.”
“Are you telling me there’s no connection between the two?”
“Depends on what you mean by connection. The genetic structure of the Chicago pathogen is very close to that of Minor Roar.”
“How close?”
“The Chicago pathogen differs in that it seems to require more intimate human contact for transmission.”
“Which is why we only have a couple hundred dead?”
“I believe so, yes. When I created Minor Roar, I also developed a vaccine. With some minor modifications, it should provide protection against the Chicago pathogen.”
“So the system worked exactly as you planned?”
“Excuse me?”
“You cracked the bug, ID’d its genetic soul mate, and found a potential vaccine in CDA’s data banks.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but I guess you’re right.”
“Bravo.” I tipped my glass in her direction.
She took a small sip of her drink and left a blemish on the rim of her glass. I could see a dried cake of red on her lower lip.
“Can I ask you a question, Ellen?”
“Go ahead.”
“How sure are you about all of this?”
“I usually feel pretty good about my work.”
“Then what are you scared of?”
Her pale eyes blinked. “What makes you think I’m scared?”
I looked down at the bag again. “If you’ve really cracked the pathogen, you’re a hero to half the world. And yet we sit here, in this garden spot, drinking God knows what, surrounded by fuck knows who, with a gun on the table.”
I thought I saw the smallest of smiles. Then Ellen reached into her bag and pulled out a short-barreled revolver. “Actually, two guns on the table.”
“The more, the merrier. I know why I have my piece. What about you?”
“I have concerns.”
“I’m listening.”
“My projections tell me we should have at least a thousand dead by now, yet we have only a fraction of that. I crunched the latest numbers this morning. The infection rate for the Chicago pathogen has dropped by forty percent, just in the last few hours.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“It’s a strange thing. Maybe a dangerous thing.”
I skinned another look across the room. The man with the limp shifted on his stool and reached into a pocket. My hand again crept toward my gun. He pulled out a cell phone and checked the screen. I turned my attention back to Ellen.
“Maybe the bug is just running out of victims?” I said.
“Too early for that. I also would have expected to see some leakage out of O’Hare as well.”
“Nothing?”
She shook her head. “Not that I’ve seen. It’s like the thing has just dried up and blown away.”
“Have you talked to your boss about the drop?”
“Stoddard? No.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t talked to anyone. Except you. And I’m not sure why I did that.”
The man with the limp flipped his phone shut, finished his drink, and stood. I studied the line of his coat but couldn’t discern the shape of a weapon. He threw a few dollars on the bar and left. Deke ignored the money and turned his eyes my way. I shrugged. Deke scraped the cash off the bar and stuffed it in his pocket.
“What do you keep staring at, Michael?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m still not sure what I can do for you.”
“I want someone to know what I’ve done. I know you won’t understand any of it, but there are some disks in my bag. They summarize my research. If you get them into the right hands … ”
“Where are you going?”
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now.”
“A friend is collecting Anna’s ashes in the morning. I was hoping to say good-bye.”
I’d forgotten about her sister. And now she was here. Suddenly in our conversation. And the pathogen’s faceless, nameless dead were again anything but.
“I’m sorry about Anna,” I said.
“Thank you.” Her fingers picked at the edge of a napkin, and her face began to break into small, pale pieces. I moved my hand across the table until it brushed hers.
“It wasn’t your fault, Ellen.”
“I killed her.”
“No, you didn’t.”
She didn’t fight me. Just wiped the damp from her eyes and folded the napkin into a small, obsessive square.
“I ever tell you about my older brother?” I said.
“I don’t know anything about you.”
“His name was Philip. He hung himself with a bedsheet when he was eighteen.”
She stopped fidgeting with the napkin. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
Her voice lifted a touch. “Do you think about him?”
“Lately I have, yeah.”
“Why is that?”
It was a good question. One I didn’t have a good answer for. Philip had always been there. A memory bottled up and staring at me out of a clear glass jar. Tucked away on a shelf with all the others. Now, however, someone had cracked the seal. And my brother wandered loose through my dreams. Waking and otherwise.
“How old were you when he died?” she said.
“Seventeen. Philip was in jail. Something stupid. I never called. Never wrote. Never talked to him, except for the one time.”
“Seventeen years old?”
“About.”
“Did you know how to call?”
“I knew how to use a phone.”
“That’s not the same as calling in to a prison.”
“I knew how to mail a letter.”
“So you feel responsible for his death?”
“I feel like I never said good-bye.”
Ellen reached for her empty glass, and it seemed we couldn’t have been in a better place than the bar we were in. With all the people we couldn’t see. Drinking and smoking. No one speaking. Everyone watching one another’s ghosts in the murk.
“You think you know who’s behind all of this?” she said.
“I have some ideas.”
“For a while you thought it might be me.”
I shook my head.
“What changed your mind?”
“Your pain.”
She wanted to laugh but couldn’t seem to muster the energy. Instead, she slipped a flat package onto the table between us. “For you.”
I looked at the parcel. Wrapped in brown paper with black string. “What is it?”
“Read the note inside. Then do what you want.”
I began to pick at the wrappings.
“Later, Michael. After I’ve gone.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Eventually? Back to my microscopes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe find some answers of my own.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
She gave me a hard, ugly snicker. A shiver ran between us.
“This won’t end well, will it?” I said.
“What do you think?” She pushed her glass forward an inch. “Maybe we should have another drink.”
“You gonna tell me what you’re scared of?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay, then. Let’s have another.”