An hour later, I pul ed into an industrial park in the 700 block of South Jefferson. The sky was heavy with the promise of rain. The lot, empty. I tugged a black knit hat low over my eyes and walked three blocks with my head down. The cops had taken down the tape from Maria Jackson’s murder, but I took a quick look around anyway.
The CTA access door was unlocked this time. A single bulb did yeoman’s work, painting a swath of white against rough wal s and the run of stairs. I spiraled down until I hit bottom. Then I stepped out, for the second time, into Chicago’s subway system. The light down here was brighter, it seemed, than the night I’d found Jackson’s body. I walked in the opposite direction, across a switchback and alongside an old spur of track. A half mile in, I came to a curve. To my left was a smal door, with the word MAINTENANCE stenciled in black on a beige wal . That’s where I found her, sitting on a beat-up bench.
“Michael, you found it.”
“Sorry, I’m late. I got tied up.”
I moved a little closer. Katherine Lawson was wearing a black leather coat and kept her hands in her pockets. Behind her was a row of old lockers, most with their doors missing.
“What do you think of the place?” She withdrew a gloved hand and swung it around the tiny room. “Maria Jackson’s body was found about a hundred yards down the tracks from where you came in. They found this little shed while they were working the scene.”
“That’s nice, Katherine. Why did you want to meet me here?”
I had wanted to set up my own meeting with the FBI agent and struggled with time and place. Then she’d cal ed late last night and did the heavy lifting for me.
“You mean why not a drink like normal people?” Her laugh sounded flat and never reached her eyes. “There’s a few things we need to talk about, Michael. A few things we need to take a look at.”
Lawson pul ed a sheaf of papers from her pocket. “You asked about Jim Doherty’s red binder the other day. I copied some pages for you. Thought you might want to take a look.”
I shook my head. “Had a long talk with the mayor. He convinced me the binder real y wasn’t worth my time.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I didn’t realize Homeland Security would get involved. Otherwise, I never would have filed that report.”
“You heard about their visit?”
“I got one, too. There’s something about the Doherty thing that bothers me, Michael. Something I think we’re missing.”
“I know what you mean.”
She held up her fistful of paper. “It has to do with the binder and the tracks near where Jackson’s body was found. Let me show you, then you can take a pass if you want.”
I sat down opposite her on the bench. “There’s something else we should talk about first.”
“What’s that?” she said.
I took out my folder and placed it on top of the paperwork she had already spread out between us. She looked, but didn’t touch.
“Does this have to do with Doherty?” she said.
“Open it up and take a look.”
She flicked the edge of the file open. I kept talking.
“The top set of papers comes from 1978. Outlines the ownership structure for Transco and its holding company, CMT.”
Her eyes shimmered in the jaundiced light. “The company you think caused the old train accident?”
“Yeah.”
Lawson flipped through the documents and twisted her face into a smile. “Is this supposed to mean something to me?”
“I’m guessing you came across it when you worked the case on Father Mark. He was ripping off his parish, and someone made the mistake of giving you a look at the archdiocese’s books.”
“Everyone knows I worked that case, Michael.”
“What they didn’t know about was CMT Holding.”
Lawson didn’t say anything, but I could see the muscle in her jaw pumping like a piston.
“You know how much money the Chicago archdiocese takes in every year, Katherine? A little more than a bil ion dol ars. Cash money. Tax-free. Not even an IRS form to file. Nice work if you can get it.”
I waited, but Lawson just sat there, hands in her pockets, and listened.
“CMT was set up in the 1920s. It’s a tangled trail, but a lawyer named Bernstein provided me with a map. The seed money came from the archdiocese’s coffers. A greedy cardinal’s way to secretly invest in a little property, a few railroads. Make a little coin he didn’t have to share with the parishioners. CMT got bigger over time. Cardinals and bishops got greedier with each passing generation. Created a web of related businesses, subsidiaries like Transco. Then 1980 happened. The crash at Lake and Wabash and eleven people dead. Blood the men in col ars needed to get clean of. So they divested themselves of everything, dissolved CMT, and walked-no, ran-away and hid. Then you came along.”
Final y, something had caught her interest, and Lawson stirred. “Excuse me?”
Among other things, the Honorable John J. Wilson keeps a man named Walter Sopak on his personal payrol. Sopak is what’s known as a forensic accountant-a guy who knows how to hide your money and how to find out where someone else’s is hidden. I’ve never met the man. Wilson made sure of that. But I pul ed Sopak’s report on Katherine Lawson from the folder.
“You make a little over a hundred thousand a year, Katherine. Your parents are dead. They left you a nice set of teeth and a pile of debt. Stil…” I tapped Sopak’s report. “There’s the condo in Sante Fe and a timeshare in Italy. Hidden pretty wel, but there they are. And then there’s the money that goes offshore and just disappears. Even the guy who put this report together wasn’t sure he found it al, but he made a pretty good guess.”
“Guess at what, Michael?”
“He figures you’re good for maybe one to two mil ion a year, minimum, from whoever keeps the church’s secrets. Maybe seven to ten mil ion total over the last five years.”
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“Am I?”
“Either that or you need a long vacation.”
I pul ed out the unregistered. 38 Rodriguez had given me to use on Doherty. “You got a gun, Katherine?”
She ran her eyes to the tracks behind me and back. “I have my service weapon, Michael.” She showed me the Glock on her hip.
“Stand up, take it out, and put it on the ground.”
She did.