Chapter 7 - The Anatomy of a Collapse
Upstairs in the city above, Cormack Vale was not playing defense.
He sat in the rear of a nondescript panel van parked three blocks away from Marsh’s primary commercial real estate office on Michigan Avenue. Fitz Bangan sat in the front passenger seat, tossing a heavy brass door-decoy tool back and forth between his palms.
"We checked every property Marsh owns in Cook County," Fitz reported, reading from a tablet illuminated by the dashboard lights. "Twelve commercial warehouses, three residential apartment blocks, and one historic brownstone on Astor Street. But there’s a sub-level utility grid beneath the North Side properties tied to an old transit tunnel system that was sealed off back in the seventies."
Cormack leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His face was carved from absolute ice. "Which one?"
"The old Meridian cold-storage annex on Franklin," Fitz said. "Property tax records show it was bought by a shell company controlled by Halloway and Straoud three years ago. It’s zoned for industrial storage, but municipal power draws show heavy climate control running twenty-four hours a day in a basement that’s supposedly empty."
Cormack reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out the crumpled coaster once more. He smoothed it out against his thigh with his thumb.
"Get the car," Cormack said.
Within five minutes, two black SUVs detached from the shadows of the alleyways and moved silently through the unplowed snow toward Franklin Street. They didn't look like police cars, and they didn't look like corporate transport; they moved with the absolute, disciplined coordination of a military extraction unit.
When they reached the brick annex, Fitz didn't bother trying the front lock. He pulled a heavy hydraulic spreader from the back of the van, jammed the jaws into the reinforced steel frame of the side utility door, and applied pressure.
Pop-hiss.
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The heavy steel bolts sheared out of the rotting wooden jamb with the sound of a pistol shot.
Cormack walked through the breach first, his heavy boots crunching against frozen gravel, his hand resting inside his coat where a legal, licensed Sig Sauer P229 waited against his ribs.
