I stopped on the terrazzo floor, turned, and pulled the damp receipt out of my coat pocket. It was the hundred-dollar bill Beverly had handed back to me on the tarmac at O’Hare, the one Julian had dropped when he tried to buy my silence and my seat. I folded it once lengthwise and let it drop onto the wooden bench beside his briefcase.
"Pay your retainer, Julian," I said. "You're going to need an attorney who actually shows up in court."
I left him there with the deputies, pushed through the heavy revolving doors on Clark Street, and stepped out into the steady Chicago rain.
The chill air smelled of wet asphalt, bus exhaust, and cold lake wind. I walked south toward the Loop terminal, found a quiet corner beside an all-night diner, and pulled my mobile phone from my flannel pocket. The clock on the display showed 9:18 AM. In Conshohocken, the second shift at Apex Foundry was already an hour into their morning run.
I dialed the landline to the shipping office.
Frank Kowalski picked up on the second ring, his gruff voice competing with the distant, familiar thud of the five-ton drop hammer in the main bay. "Apex Shipping, Kowalski."
"Frank," I said, leaning my shoulder against the brick wall beneath the train platform. "It’s Martin."
The noise behind him cut out as Frank pulled the heavy office door shut with his boot. "Martin? Where the hell are you? Kenneth showed up here forty minutes ago with two men in safety vests and a flatbed from Mid-Valley Rigging. They had a printed notice claiming the chancery court appointed an interim custodian. They were trying to bolt padlocks onto the scrap yard gate."
My jaw tightened, the cold rain dripping from the brim of my cap. "Where is Kenneth now?"
"He’s standing on the loading dock arguing with Joe Vance and four molders," Frank said, his breath coming hard into the receiver. "We wouldn't let them drop the chains on the bay doors without your signature. But the rigging guys have a certified copy of some emergency docket. They're telling the crew that if we block the gate, the county sheriff will padlock the entire plant by lunchtime. Martin, is the hearing done?"
"The petition was thrown out five minutes ago, Frank," I told him, keeping my voice level, steady, and clear over the rumble of the passing CTA trains. "The judge dismissed the receivership with prejudice. Julian Croft is being held for criminal contempt, and the court impounded their files. Tell Kenneth to get off the property. If the rigging crew doesn't unhook their chains in ten minutes, call Captain Miller at the borough station and tell him to arrest them for criminal trespass on an active industrial deed."
Silence hung on the line for three seconds, thick with the relief of a man who had worked thirty-four years next to the same blast furnaces.
"I'll tell him myself," Frank said, his voice dropping into gravel. "And Martin? The melt crew poured forty engine blocks on schedule this morning. The floor didn't stop for five seconds."
"Keep the blowers running, Frank," I said. "I'm heading back."
I hung up, walked across the wet platform, and caught the Blue Line train back toward O'Hare.
By two o'clock that afternoon, I was seated in a middle seat of a commercial turboprop flight heading east across the Alleghenies toward Philadelphia. There was no first-class upgrade, no linen napkin, and no corporate leather portfolio on the armrest. I had my canvas satchel resting securely between my boots, its heavy brass zipper cold against my ankles, the original 1984 deed and the certified chancery dismissal tucked neatly inside the manila folder.
We landed at Philadelphia International just after five. The Pennsylvania evening was crisp and clear, the autumn sun sinking low behind the oil refineries along the Delaware River. I took my truck from the long-term economy lot, paid the sixty-dollar parking ticket with cash, and drove northwest along the Schuylkill Expressway toward Conshohocken.
When I turned down the gravel approach to 4100 River Road, the high sodium yard lights were already humming against the dusk. The two-story corrugated steel building of Apex Foundry sat right where my grandfather had built it in 1948, its corrugated walls weathered to a deep, dark iron-gray, the brick cupola stack sending a thin, steady plume of heat into the evening sky.
The flatbed from Mid-Valley Rigging was gone. The padlocks on the chain-link gates had been cut away, the severed hardened steel links lying forgotten in the gravel beside the tire tracks.
Beside the gate office sat Kenneth’s black European sedan, parked crooked on the shoulder with its hazard lights blinking rhythmically against the chain-link fence. Kenneth was leaning against the front fender, wearing an expensive wool coat that looked absurdly clean against the soot-stained yard gravel. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, his head tilted down toward his polished shoes.