Chapter 9 - The Price of Blood
The industrial port on the south side of Chicago was an iron wasteland of towering rusted cranes, frozen coal mountains, and dark water.
The blizzard had intensified into a whiteout, the wind howling off Lake Michigan at fifty miles an hour, driving stinging needles of ice across the asphalt.
Pier forty-four stretched a quarter-mile into the black, churning lake, lined on both sides by three tiers of corrugated shipping containers.
At the end of the pier, perched forty feet above the crashing black waves on an elevated steel gantry, sat the master crane control station.
A single yellow incandescent bulb glowed inside the glass-walled booth, casting a dim, trembling halo over the icy water below.
Inside that booth, illuminated by the feeble light, a small figure sat tied to an iron chair: my sister Elena.
We sat inside the cab of a stolen diesel flatbed half a mile down the access road, the engine idling low to avoid casting exhaust plumes.
Julian Vance sat between Leo and me, his hands handcuffed behind his back, his face pale as lard beneath a heavy layer of fresh road grime.
Arthur sat on the passenger side, methodically wrapping fresh strips of black electrical tape around the grips of his weapons to counter the freezing sleet.
He had stripped off his ruined suit, replacing it with a heavy black fleece-lined tactical jacket he had taken from the packing plant's security locker.
"The crane booth has only one access ladder," Julian stammered, his breath fogging the cracked windshield.
"Silas will have four men at the base of the gantry, two on the roof of the control shack, and at least six patrolling the container alleys."
"If he sees more than one person walking down that pier, he will drop the entire control cab into forty feet of freezing water."
"The emergency release lever for the gantry cradle is mounted on the outside platform."
"He rigged it with a five-pound counterweight; if someone pulls the pin, the whole cabin shears off its bolts and drops like an anchor."
I felt the world tilt beneath me, a sickening vertigo clawing at my throat.
"He put her over the water," I whispered, my fingernails biting into my palms until I felt the skin break.
"He turned my sister into a human sinker."
Arthur reached across Julian, his large, calloused hand covering mine, his touch burning with fierce, grounding intensity.
"She isn't going into the water, Norah," he said, his voice as immovable as a mountain.
"Look at me."
I turned my head and met his cold, gray eyes, finding in them an absolute absence of doubt that terrified and comforted me all at once.
"Silas wants me dead, and he wants the books in his hands so he can crown himself king of this city," Arthur continued.
"He does not care about your family, and he does not care about Julian."
"I am going to walk down that pier alone, carrying the canvas bag."
"No," I cut him off, my voice sharp and furious.
"He will shoot you the second you clear the first row of containers, Arthur."
"You are walking into a meat grinder!"
"He won't shoot until he inspects the original ledgers," Arthur explained with chilling rationality.
"Silas is a businessman before he is a butcher."
"He knows that if he destroys the ledgers without verifying my father’s handwritten bank codes, the federal asset forfeiture will seize his terminals anyway."
"While I hold his attention on the lower crane deck, you and Leo have to reach the service catwalk beneath the pier."
"The catwalk?" Julian gasped in horror.
"The ice under the pilings is rotten! If you fall through, the current will drag you under the ice sheet in six seconds!"
"Then we won't fall," I snapped, glaring at the shivering accountant.
"My father kept a twenty-foot aluminum skiff in the slip beneath pier forty-two for thirty years."
"He used it to service the underwater intake valves for the cooling systems."
"I know every bolt, every rusted rung, and every maintenance platform under those concrete docks."
Arthur looked at me, his eyes softening with something that looked dangerously like love, though neither of us had the right to speak the word.
"The release pin on the gantry cradle," Arthur said softly.
"If you can climb the maintenance ladder from the water side and secure that counterweight with a steel shackle before Silas notices, he loses his trigger."
"And what about you?" I asked, my voice trembling with an emotion I couldn't conceal.
"What happens when he realizes you aren't going to walk off that dock alive?"
Arthur reached into his pocket and pulled out the heavy silver signet ring that bore the Costello family crest.
He took my right hand, sliding the heavy, freezing metal onto my thumb.
"If I don't walk off that dock, Norah," he whispered,
"you take Elena and the spare ledger hidden under the spare tire in this truck, and you go to the federal building in Chicago."
"You hand the books directly to the United States Attorney, and you tell him Arthur Costello paid his debt in full."
"I don't want your debt, Arthur," I choked out, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes to freeze on my cheeks.
"I want you to live."
Arthur stared at me for a long, agonizing second, his fingers tightening around mine until the silver ring bruised my bone.
"Then you better make sure that shackle doesn't slip, Norah."
He released my hand and turned to Julian, hauling the terrified man up by the collar of his ruined coat.
"It’s time to deliver your report, Julian."
"Make it convincing, or the first bullet Silas fires will go through your spine."
Arthur kicked the truck door open, stepping out into the roaring gale of sleet and salt spray.
Leo handed me a heavy steel maintenance shackle and a can of industrial de-icer from the tool compartment beneath the bench seat.
"Your father was a stubborn man, little girl," the old Sicilian muttered, racking the slide of his pump shotgun with a heavy clack.
May you like
"Let's see if the blood runs true."
We dropped out of the truck cab into the howling blizzard, vanishing into the shadows beneath the frozen concrete piers of Lake Michigan.
