Saturday
After they’d gone I cleared the coffee mugs and set them in the kitchen sink. Luke followed me in. “So you want to tell me about this character?”
“There’s not much to say. I was working on a video about the water-intake cribs that got canceled because of 9/11. But I had outtakes of a guy—well, like I said, it gets complicated.”
“You seem to have a habit of getting fired.”
I whirled around, ready for battle.
“Just kidding.” He raised his palms. “The Bureau guy has a very high opinion of himself.”
“I think he’s the kind of person who skates over life’s surfaces but has trouble handling the currents underneath.”
“I don’t have anything to worry about, do I?”
Was Luke jealous? This was a new experience. I dried my hands, went to him, and stroked his cheek. “From LeJeune? The only thing you have to worry about is that he knows the best Creole joints in Chicago.”
He leaned in and kissed me. “Still, I am worried. Not about him, but you. This can’t go on.”
“I get it.” I hesitated. “By the way”—I disengaged from his embrace and looked up—“there’s something else you should know.”
“What?”
“I do have a copy of the flash drive. I made it before I ran the first one over to Dolan.”
“Of course you did.” He sighed. “And whoever wants it probably knows it. Including LeJeune.”
“I had it all on my hard drive, but I deleted it the other night. I decided to keep the copy on me at all times. Just in case.”
“Why not put it in your safe-deposit box?”
“I’ll think about it.”
Luke folded his arms. “You might want to make your mind up soon. By the way, while you’re deciding, I’m going to do some due diligence of my own,” Luke said. “We’re not going to sit around waiting for someone to come after you.”
If LeJeune glided through life at his own pace, Luke attacked life head-on. He walked out of the kitchen. A moment later I heard him on his cell.
We piled into Luke’s pickup later that afternoon. Luke’s father had been a highly successful railroad magnate. He developed the automatic coupler between train cars, which made him a fortune. Luke had inherited all his wealth and could afford—well—a dozen Spyders. But flash wasn’t his style. He didn’t even want the new Benz pickup; he liked a Dodge Ram. The only concessions he’d made when he bought a new one were comfortable seats, AC, and a GPS, mostly for me.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out.”
“Oh, I just love secrets.”
He shot me a look, but then took a roundabout route across the North Shore, winding around streets, turning sharp corners, and twisting onto side streets, all in a seemingly random pattern.
“You think we’re being tailed?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, but I was grateful. He wasn’t taking anything for granted. We headed north on Route 41 past Lake Forest and Lake Bluff. Eventually we turned east to Great Lakes Naval Station , boot camp for navy recruits and the service’s largest training facility. More than eleven hundred buildings sit on sixteen hundred acres, making it a small city unto itself. I figured we were going to meet someone there, but when Luke passed the entrance I was confused.
“We’re not going in?”
He shook his head.
Five minutes later we were in downtown Waukegan. Unfortunately, Waukegan, Illinois, is not an example of progressive urban planning. After the affluence of Highland Park, Lake Forest, and Lake Bluff, Waukegan seems like the orphan child left behind. With a hundred thousand people, the city isn’t small, but whatever charm it may have had has been gutted by decades of mismanagement and corruption. Now it has a distressed, hardscrabble landscape broken up by a string of chain stores and gas stations.
“Luke, why are we here?” I asked.
Luke studied the rear view as carefully as the windshield. After five minutes circling the block, he pulled up to a place that had to be two steps below a dive bar. A corner tavern, its walls were covered by graffiti in loopy letters, and its windows were probably last washed during the Depression. It didn’t even have a name, but a neon sign above the door said “Bar.” The letter r flickered in the dusky light.
“We could have gone to Solyst’s,” I said. “Why did we have to come all this way?” Solyst’s was a bar in my village, although the new owners recently upgraded the bathrooms to semi-luxurious, so I’m not sure it still qualifies as a dive.
Luke got out of the truck, came around to my side, and opened the door.
“Something tells me I’m not gonna like this,” I said.