He’s Homeland Security’s worst nightmare. More than a decade after 9/11, someone is setting off fire bombs in Chicago using untraceable cell phones. The international terror channels are silent. An unknown group calling itself the Islamic Freedom Federation takes credit for the bombings and demands the release of Hassan Al-Shahid, a University of Chicago graduate student whose plan to set off a bomb at the Art Institute was thwarted at the last minute by Detective David Gold and his long-time partner, Detective Paul Liszewski. Their heroic efforts had cost Liszewski his life and put Gold in the hospital. The FBI and Homeland Security believe the new bomber is a “lone wolf”—a freelancer who operates off the grid. That makes him even more dangerous.
Meet Detective David Gold. He’s a third generation native of South Chicago, the hardscrabble neighborhood of steel mills, smokestacks, and steeples near the Indiana border. He’s also one of Chicago’s most decorated homicide detectives.
Meet Gold’s new partner, Detective A.C. Battle. He’s a native of Mississippi whose family moved to Chicago to escape the Jim Crow South. He grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes—the penal colony of high rises across the Dan Ryan Expressway from Mayor Daley’s house and Comiskey Park
Gold is still suffering from the aftereffects of Liszewski’s death when he receives a Medal of Valor on the steps of the Art Institute. During the ceremony, a car bomb explodes across the street, killing one passerby and showering pedestrians with shrapnel and glass. A moment later, Gold receives a cryptic text message: “It isn’t over.”
It’s just the beginning. Untraceable car bombs are detonated at the Wrigley Field El station, Millennium Park, the Museum of Science and Industry, O’Hare Airport, the Hyde Park train station, and the upscale Rush Street area near North Michigan Avenue. The best minds at Chicago PD, the FBI, and Homeland Security can’t trace him, but the evidence points toward members of Chicago’s Islamic community. Within a day, the bomber accomplishes the seemingly impossible: a single person has shut down a major U.S. city.
As the explosions rock Chicago and the death toll mounts, Gold and Battle are drawn into a desperate cat-and-mouse game against a brilliant and cunning mind. THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR is a timely, compelling, and, at times, terrifying read by a master of suspense. From its opening scene to its stunning climax, New York Times best selling author Sheldon Siegel writes a lightning paced thriller capturing the complexity and fears of the post-9/11 world. Along the way, he gives his readers an insider’s look at Chicago’s colorful neighborhoods—from the high rises of the Magnificent Mile to century-old churches where mass is still celebrated in Polish to the ivy-covered buildings at the University of Chicago to crumbling old synagogues and gritty seafood shacks next to the ghostly expanses of vacant land where the steel mills once stood.
New York Times & Amazon.com Bestseller
Amazon Rating: 4.2/5 (read reviews)
Goodreads Rating: 4.17/5 (read reviews)
“Chicago Detectives David Gold and A.C. Battle are strong entries in the police-thriller sweepstakes, with Sheldon Siegel’s new THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR, a smart, surprising and bloody take on the world of Islamic terror. As a crazed bomber threatens to shut down America’s third-largest city, the Chicago cops, the FBI, Homeland Security and even the military desperately sift through every available clue to the bomber’s identity, reaching for a climax that is both shocking and credible. New York Times best selling author Siegel tells a story that is fast and furious and authentic.” John Sandford. New York Times Best Selling Author of STOLEN PREY and the Lucas Davenport Prey Series.
“Sheldon Siegel’s THE TERRORIST NEXT DOORhas all the indicators of a bestselling thriller – fast action, characters you think you’ve met in real life, bold storytelling and clever plotting. The great city of Chicago comes alive under his spell, and the woes of that city in THE TERRORIST NEXT DOORturn out to be the woes of our republic. Excellent.” T. Jefferson Parker. New York Times Best Selling Author of THE JAGUAR and THE BORDER LORDS.
“Sheldon Siegel blows the doors off with his excellent new thriller, THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR. Bombs, car chases, the shutdown of Chicago, plus Siegel’s winning touch with character makes this one not to be missed!” John Lescroart. New York Times Best Selling Author of THE HUNTER.
“Sheldon Siegel knows how to make us root for the good guys in this heartstopping terrorist thriller, and police detectives David Gold and A.C. Battle are a pair of very good guys. We’d like to see them again.” Thomas Perry. New York Times Best Selling Author of POISON FLOWER.
“Sheldon Siegel has outdone himself in this, his first true thriller. The rough underbelly of Chicago is evoked and comes to life as poetically and profoundly as in Carl Sandburg’s insider view. THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR will go down as the scariest, most chilling portrayal of what can happen to life in a normal Midwestern city if one small cog goes haywire. A real power play.” Katherine Neville. New York Times and International Best Selling Author of THE EIGHT and THE FIRE.
“THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR is a terrific, old-fashioned thriller. Sheldon Siegel again demonstrates why he is considered a master story teller with the likes of John Sanford and Scott Turow. THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR is a taught, tense, action-packed thrill ride that starts on page one and puts a stranglehold on the reader to the explosive end. The tension is palpable as Detective David Gold races through the streets of Chicago to stop an unknown terrorist before the next bomb detonates. I love Siegel’s Mike Daley series, and David Gold is destined to be just as addictive. I’m already waiting for the next book in the series!” Robert Dugoni. New York TimesBest Selling Author of THE CONVICTION.
“Sheldon Siegel’s tale of cataclysmic terrorism is so realistic, well-drawn and deliciously chilling, I wanted to send the book to all my friends—especially those who work in Homeland Security. Women will lose their hearts to Detective David Gold. THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR kept me up late into the night, frantically turning the pages to get to the dramatic conclusion. A terrific thriller by a master of the craft.” Allison Leotta. Best Selling Author of LAW OF ATTRACTION.
“I hate Sheldon Siegel. He makes it look so easy. Deftly turning his attention from courtroom battles to terrorist plots, he delivers a page turner with a heart, and the love affair is with the great city of Chicago and the people who call it home. Great fun and a terrific read, THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR delivers a killer story at a breakneck pace with characters you won’t forget. How does Siegel get away with it? Seriously, I hate the guy.” David Corbett. Award-winning author of THE DEVIL’S REDHEAD.
“From the first page—when the blind, smelly, homeless man turns out to be a young, physically fit terrorist who is determined to blow up Chicago—I was hooked. THE TERRORIST NEXT DOORmoves through Chicago at a fast pace. Now I happen to love Chicago, and I thought I knew it, but as I joined Detective David Gold in the chase, I got to look behind the facades into the soul of the Windy City. Gold is a marvelous character. He’s smart, brave, and conflicted. But Chicago is also a major character and as the action moves from The Art Institute to the South Side, from the cop cars to the churches, from the smallest take out joint to the fanciest spots, the terrorist keeps taunting Gold and the reader. I can’t wait to start telling my customers about this gem. It will keep you up nights and keep you thinking about David Gold, Chicago, and THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR all day long.” Elaine Petrocelli. Book Passage. Corte Madera, California.
1
“IT ISN’T OVER”
To the tourists strolling down Michigan Avenue on that hazy summer morning, he looked like a homeless blind man sitting on a urine-soaked cardboard in the doorway of the T-shirt shop across the street from the Art Institute.
Except he wasn’t homeless. And he wasn’t blind.
The waif-thin young man with the wispy beard and the sunglasses nervously fingered the prepaid cell phone buried deep inside the pocket of the dirt-encrusted overcoat he’d purchased at a Salvation Army thrift store two days earlier. Cheap, easy-to-program, and readily available, the throwaway phones were popular with everyone from globe-trotting corporate executives to budget-conscious college students. They required neither a contract nor a credit card and were virtually untraceable, making them the tool of choice among drug dealers and terrorists. With a few strokes on the Internet, a high school kid of reasonable intelligence and modest technological savvy could turn a cell phone into a detonator.
His lungs filled with fumes from the #14 CTA bus idling on the southwest corner of Michigan and Adams. At 8:45 on Monday morning, the thermometer already had topped ninety degrees, and there was no breeze in the not-so-Windy City.
Still a lot cooler than Baghdad. And considerably less dangerous—for now.
He was still in his twenties, but his battle-hardened face and the flecks of gray in his beard made him appear older. His intense eyes moved behind the dark glasses as he silently repeated the mantra his instructors had drilled into him from his first day of training: meticulous planning is the key to success. That explained the bulky raincoat, the soiled denim work pants, and the heavy boots, despite the intense heat. Repulsed by his stench and shoddy appearance, the passers-by kept their distance—just as he had planned it.
The annual summer carnival on Chicago’s grandest boulevard was in full bloom, but he barely noticed. Young couples sipped lattes from Starbucks cups as they pushed colorful baby strollers down the sidewalk. Stylishly-dressed tourists conversed in Spanish, French, Japanese, German, and Russian as they looked in the windows of the upscale stores. College kids in tank tops, T-Shirts and royal blue Cubs caps made their way toward Millennium Park. Lawyers, accountants, and brokers in charcoal business suits and subdued rep ties pressed smart phones to their ears as they strode deliberately into the Loop. Students from the Art Institute lugged bulky portfolios and painting supplies to their classes. Fast food employees, security guards, and construction workers walked alongside office workers, retailers, and librarians.
The young man looked up Michigan Avenue at the Wrigley Building, the white jewel of the Magnificent Mile on the Chicago River, a half-mile north of where he was sitting. It was dwarfed by Donald Trump’s ninety-story monstrosity on the site of the old Sun-Times building. He turned his attention across the street to the Art Institute, the Beaux Arts masterpiece on the western edge of Grant Park. On those rare occasions when a Chicago team made the playoffs, the two bronze lions guarding the museum’s doors would be decorated in the team’s uniform.
He watched a dozen cops cordon off the steps of the museum. A tightly wound woman from the mayor’s office barked instructions to a group of sweaty city workers setting up a microphone beneath the limp flag of the City of Chicago hanging above the archway marked “Members’ Entrance.” He felt bile in his throat when the police chief and the head of the Chicago office of Homeland Security emerged from a black van. The chief had earned his stripes in Personnel. He was elevated to the top job because he was the former mayor’s best friend when they were kids on the Southwest Side. The DHS guy was an even bigger disaster. The retired investment banker lived in the North Shore suburb of Kenilworth, a leafy enclave of gated mansions along Lake Michigan. His sole law enforcement experience had been a brief tour of duty with the Kenilworth Police Commission. To his credit, there had been no terrorist attacks in the affluent hamlet on his watch.
The young man craved a cigarette as he glanced at the ’94 Camry he’d stolen two days earlier and parked in a handicapped space on Adams, just west of Michigan. He commended himself for taking a car with a blue placard and no alarm.
Attention to detail.
He looked down Michigan Avenue for the unmarked police unit carrying the guest of honor to the ceremony across the street. The security of America’s third largest city had been entrusted to a pencil-pushing cop and a pencil-necked political appointee. That needed to change. He would show everybody just how easy it would be for one man to shut down a major U.S. city.
* * *
“I’m glad it’s over,” Gold said.
“So is the entire City of Chicago,” his new partner replied.
Detective David Gold was sitting in the passenger seat of an unmarked Crown Vic inching north on Lake Shore Drive alongside Soldier Field, just south of downtown Chicago’s signature skyline. The South Chicago native was sweating through the navy dress uniform that still fit him perfectly even though he’d worn it only a handful of times since he’d become Chicago’s youngest homicide detective ten years earlier. The overburdened air conditioner was losing the battle against the beating sun and the eighty-eight percent humidity that made the Second City such an inviting tourist destination in late July.
“How long will this take?” Gold asked. He’d spent his entire life on the Southeast Side, spoke without a Chicago accent. If an interrogation called for a local touch, he could flatten his vowels and swallow his consonants to sound like his neighbors. He was also fluent in Spanish.
“Fifteen minutes,” his partner said. “You’re getting a Medal of Valor. It would be good form to accept it graciously.”
Gold nodded grudgingly. He felt a shooting pain in his left shoulder as they barreled over a pothole. At thirty-eight, his wiry body felt like the car’s overworked shock absorbers. His closely cropped hair was more gray than brown. He had a balky knee, a scar along his jaw line, and countless aches and pains from almost two decades of award-winning police work in the South Side’s toughest neighborhoods. “This is a photo op for the mayor and the chief,” he said.
“Welcome to Chicago,” his new partner replied.
Detective A.C. Battle was a burly African American in his late fifties whose melodious basso voice combined the dialects of his native Mississippi with the ghettos of Chicago’s South Side. He had grown up in the projects across the Dan Ryan Expressway from old ComiskeyPark. The first Mayor Daley had built the Robert Taylor Homes in the fifties to house thirty thousand African Americans, many of whom—like Battle and his parents—had fled the Jim Crow South. It was also a blatant attempt to segregate them from the terrified white people in the mayor’s neighborhood west of the highway. The Taylor Homes devolved into a cesspool of poverty and violence until the second Mayor Daley finally ordered their demolition in the nineties. Before he was promoted to detective, Battle had spent twenty years patrolling the high-rise shooting galleries of his youth.
Battle looked up at the ornate columns of the iconic stadium where the not-so-monstrous Monsters of the Midway had plied their trade since they’d moved from Wrigley Field in 1971. In an ill-conceived remodel, a soaring ultra-modern bowl had been shoe-horned inside the historic shell, making it look like the Millennium Falcon had landed inside the Roman Coliseum. “Are you going to the Bears’ game next Saturday?” he asked.
“The exhibition games are a waste of time,” Gold said. His family had held season tickets since George Halas had stormed the sidelines and Sid Luckman had run the T-formation. Except during his four years at the U. of I. in Champaign, Gold hadn’t missed a regular season or playoff game in three decades.
Battle nodded. “Think the Cubs will make a move before the trading deadline?”
“Doubtful.” Gold had little patience for small talk, but he had met Battle for the first time twenty minutes earlier, and he knew they would be engaged in the mating ritual of new partners for several months. “You’re a Cubs guy?”
“‘fraid so.”
Gold pushed out a melodramatic sigh. The long-standing animosity between the fans of Chicago’s baseball teams was as much a tradition as the St. Patrick’s Day parade and corruption in City Hall. Sox fans tended to be open and notorious about their contempt for their North Side counterparts. Cubs fans were a more civil bunch; they simply refused to acknowledge that there was a team south of Madison Street. “You’re a South Sider,” he said. “How did this happen?”
“Ernie.”
Before Michael Jordan, Ernie Banks had been Chicago’s reigning sports idol. “Your guys haven’t won a World Series since 1908.”
“Every team can have a bad century. Besides, we have a nicer ballpark.”
Yes, you do. “That’s another reason the Cubs keep losing. It’s a quality control issue. Sox fans won’t pay for an inferior product.”
“You like new Sox Park?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Even though the White Sox had won the 2005 World Series after a brief eighty-eight year drought, Gold hadn’t forgiven his favorite team for replacing the crumbling old ball yard where Shoeless Joe Jackson had played with a soulless structure bearing the name of a cell phone company. His disdain for the park’s aesthetic shortcomings didn’t prevent him from picking up a few extra bucks working security on weekends. He was also grateful for the modern plumbing.
They turned onto McFetridge Drive, which ran between the stadium and the Field Museum of Natural History. In Green Bay, the roads adjacent to Lambeau Field were named after legendary coaches and players. In Chicago, the street next to the stadium where Gale Sayers, Dick Butkus, and Walter Payton had played honored the longtime head of the Chicago Park District, who had doled out thousands of patronage jobs to his political cronies.
“How’s your shoulder?” Battle asked.
Feels like a rusty hinge. “Fine,” Gold lied. His left arm was jammed against the shotgun bolted upright between them. The heat outside would subside in a few days. The pain in the shoulder he’d separated a month earlier would take longer. “I’m cleared for light duty.”
“Why the big rush to get back to work?”
Gold planted his tongue firmly in his cheek. “So many criminals, so little time.”
The corner of Battle’s mouth turned up. “I guess everything I’ve heard about you is true.”
“Depends what you’ve heard.”
“You’re relentless.”
“That’s fair.”
“You don’t take money.”
“That’s true.”
“And you have a chip on your shoulder the size of a four-by-four.”
Here we go. “Actually,” Gold said, “it’s no bigger than a two-by-four.”
Battle shot a glance at his new partner. “For what it’s worth, my sources told me you never quit and you’ve got my back.”
“For what it’s worth,” Gold replied, “my sources said the same thing about you.”
* * *
The young man’s stomach churned as he strained to see over the buses on Michigan Avenue. He hadn’t eaten since the previous night. He hadn’t slept in two days. The stench of urine and his own sweat made him queasy. He checked the Camry again. He looked across the street at the Art Institute. The mayor adjusted his tie, the chief tested a microphone, and the idiot from Homeland Security chatted amiably with the strident woman from WGN. His heart beat faster as he looked down Michigan Avenue for an unmarked Crown Vic.
Where the hell is Detective David Gold?
* * *
“What does A.C. stand for?” Gold asked.
“Aloysius Charles,” Battle replied. “I’m named after my great-great-grandfather. He was the first member of my family born free after the Civil War.”
They were heading north on Michigan Avenue. To their left were shiny condos, hotels, and office buildings in an area that had been the South Loop’s skid row. On their right was the serene greenery of Grant Park, and, in the distance, the shimmering water of Lake Michigan.
Battle pulled a toothpick from the ashtray and inserted it into his mouth “Mind if I ask you something?”
“Sure.” It was better to play it straight on their first day together.
“Why do you still live in South Chicago?”
“It’s home,” Gold answered quickly. He was fiercely proud of his lineage as a third-generation native of the hardscrabble neighborhood of smokestacks and steeples wedged between 79th Street, the Skyway, the Indiana state line, and Lake Michigan. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.”
You’re more than just curious. “Are you asking me why I still live in a neighborhood where all the white people left thirty years ago?”
Battle kept his eyes on the road. “I realize it isn’t politically correct.”
“We were there first,” Gold said.
“What do you mean?”
“My great-grandfather moved from Russia to South Chicago in 1894. I realize it isn’t politically correct, but there weren’t any black people in the neighborhood back then.”
“I didn’t know there were any people in South Chicago back then.”
“Oh yes there were.”
Battle waited a beat. “You don’t have to stay.”
“Yes, I do.” Gold looked at his new partner. “A couple of years ago, I moved in with my father after my mother died. It was supposed to be temporary, but then he had a stroke, and now somebody has to stay with him. For the foreseeable future, that’s going to be me. My brother lives in Lake Forest. He’s a hotshot mergers and acquisitions lawyer. He’s good about paying for caregivers, but he won’t come down to South Chicago unless it’s an emergency.”
“Why didn’t you and your parents move when everybody else did?”
“My dad taught science at Bowen. My mom was the librarian at the South Chicago library. They had this crazy idea that it was our neighborhood, and we weren’t going to leave.” Gold decided it was his turn to ask a few questions. “Why’d you transfer down to Area 2?”
“I live over by South Chicago Hospital. I wanted to work closer to home.”
Sure. “The powers-that-be didn’t send you to babysit me after I got my partner killed?”
“Of course not.” Battle removed the toothpick from his mouth. “Stop beating yourself up, Dave. You and Paulie stopped a terrorist attack. You sure as hell didn’t get him killed.”
“Tell that to Katie and her kids.”
“I did—at Paulie’s funeral.”
Detective Paul Liszewski was the eldest of eight brothers who had grown up on the East Side, a few blocks from the Indiana border. He and Gold had played basketball against each other in high school, and they’d become fast friends as rookie cops at South Chicago station. They spent their free time shooting hoops at the South Chicago Y, where they were usually the only white guys in the gym. The cerebral, lightning fast Jewish guard from Bowen, and the tenacious, lumbering Catholic forward from St. Francis de Sales complemented each other on the court and watched each other’s backs on the street.
Battle tried again. “You did everything by the book. That’s why you’re getting a medal.”
“Yeah.” Gold closed his eyes and replayed the events in his mind for the thousandth time. It had started a month earlier when the bullet-riddled body of a crystal meth addict named UdellJones was dumped next to the rusty chain link fence enclosing the long-abandoned U.S. Steel South Works site. Jones was a forgotten man from a forgotten corner of town whose death didn’t even rate a line in the SouthtownStar. To Gold and Paulie, he was still a South Chicago guy entitled to an investigation.
A snitch told them that Jones had mentioned a potential new source of crystal meth in a boarded-up two-flat at 84th and Mackinaw. They pulled a warrant and kicked in the door. Paulienever knew what hit him when a fire bomb detonated, killing him instantly. Despite suffering a Type 3 shoulder separation, Gold tackled a young man fleeing the building. He was later identified as Hassan Al-Shahid, a grad student at the U. of C. whose family owned an investment firm in Riyadh. The Saturday Night Special used to kill Jones was found in Al-Shahid’s pocket. The two-flat housed a sophisticated bomb factory. A search of Al-Shahid’s elegant condo on Hyde Park Boulevard uncovered plans to set off a bomb at the Art Institute. That’s how the War on Terror had found its way to the unlikeliest of locations: South Chicago.
The FBI and Homeland Security had trumpeted Al-Shahid’s arrest as a great victory. Gold had a decidedly cooler take after he discovered that the Bureau had been monitoring Al-Shahid for months—a detail they hadn’t mentioned to Chicago PD. Gold blamed the feds for Paulie’s death—a contention they disputed. They couldn’t deny one plain truth: if Gold and Paulie hadn’t pursued the investigation into the death of Udell Jones, Chicago may have borne the brunt of the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.
* * *
The young man watched the Crown Vic pull up in front of the Art Institute. A uniform escorted Gold up the steps, where he accepted handshakes from the chief and the imbecile from Homeland Security. Gold recoiled when the mayor clapped him on his left shoulder.
He clutched the cell phone more tightly.
* * *
Gold looked across the street at the high rises lining the west side of Michigan Avenue. The mayor was speaking, but Gold wasn’t listening. He was thinking about Katie Liszewski, who was now the single mother of boys aged nine, seven, five, and four. He had visited her almost every day since Paulie’s funeral. He felt a lump in his throat as he recalled the advice of his first partner as they’d driven the hard streets of South Chicago: a cop never cries.
Gold was watching a young mother walking hand-in-hand with her daughter across the street when he felt a nudge from Battle’s elbow. The small crowd was applauding. He adjusted his collar and walked toward the mayor, who smiled broadly and handed him a medal.
“The people of Chicago are very grateful for your heroism,” he said. “Because of your bravery, the people of Chicago are able to enjoy the cultural treasures of this great museum.”
“Thank you,” Gold replied. He stepped to the microphone. “This is dedicated to the memory of Detective Paul Liszewski.” He swallowed and added, “I’m glad it’s over.”
* * *
The young man ignored the pedestrians as he watched the ceremony across the street. As the applause reached a crescendo, he pressed Send.
* * *
Gold was still forcing a smile for the cameras when a Camry parked on Adams exploded. He recoiled as the ground shook and the vehicle was consumed by thick orange flames. The car lifted off the ground, then landed hard on its tires. A fireball roared up Adams, which filled with black smoke. The area was rocked again when the gas tank exploded. The impact blew out the windows of the high rise on the corner, showering the ducking pedestrians with shattered glass.
Gold’s ears rang and his shoulder throbbed. The heavy air smelled of burning gasoline as smoke billowed toward the Art Institute. Car alarms screamed and traffic stopped. Pedestrians stood transfixed for an instant, then they ran across Michigan Avenue toward Grant Park. The cops in front of the Art Institute moved across the street, first at a jog and then at a sprint.
* * *
The young man watched the pandemonium he had created from the smoke-filled alley behind the T-shirt shop. He made sure nobody was looking. Then he tossed his overcoat and pants into a Dumpster. He pressed Send once more. He turned off the cell phone, set it on the ground, smashed it, and dropped the remains into a sewer. Now sporting a Cubs T-shirt and khaki cutoffs, he joined the crowds jogging west on Adams toward Wabash.
* * *
Gold and Battle were standing in front of one of the bronze lions when Gold’s BlackBerry vibrated. He had a text message. His stomach tightened as he opened it.
It read, “It isn’t over.”
2
“PEOPLE WILL DIE”
“We need to talk,” Gold said.
Chief Kevin Maloney lowered the megaphone he’d commandeered in a futile attempt to bring order to the intersection of Michigan and Adams. “Not now,” he snapped.
Gold and Battle had found Maloney at the center of a dozen uniforms who had surrounded the Camry. The two hundred and sixty pounds he carried on his six-foot-four-inch frame were considerably softer than during the days he’d played offensive tackle at St. Rita. His older brother still ran the tavern at 37th and Halsted that his grandfather—the longtime chairman of the Eleventh Ward Central Committee—had opened the day after the repeal of Prohibition. His traditional crew cut and perpetual half-grin gave him the appearance of a guy who bought the first round of Old Styles for his softball team at his old man’s saloon.
Gold tried again. “Chief—”
“Later.”
Gold’s lungs burned as he surveyed the scene. Sirens wailed. Police cars, ambulances, and fire engines struggled to navigate the gridlock. Pedestrians with soot-covered faces covered their mouths as they made their way to the east side of Michigan Avenue. An overmatched uniform perched next to the traffic signal tried to steer the traffic to one side. An ambulance lost precious seconds as it inched along the crowded sidewalk.
Maloney raised the megaphone again, but Gold reached over and pushed it down. He spoke directly into the chief’s ear. “I just got a text from the asshole who set off the bomb. He said it isn’t over. He blocked the return number, and our carrier couldn’t trace it. Our best tech guy in Area 2 thinks he used a throwaway cell phone with no GPS.”
“Why the hell did he contact you?”
“It must have something to do with the Al-Shahid case.”
“Did you call the FBI?”
“Not yet.” I wanted to give you a chance to step up to the plate.
The chief frowned. “We need to get them involved right away.”
This response came as no surprise to Gold. Maloney was a political animal who kept his superiors happy and deflected blame when things went wrong. If the feds identified the bomber, he would magnanimously take credit for putting the interests of the city ahead of his personal glory. If they couldn’t, he wouldn’t hesitate to throw them under the #14 CTA bus idling in front of them.
“I’ll handle it,” Maloney said. “In the meantime, I need you and Battle to help us secure the scene and look for witnesses.”
“We’re going to take the lead in this investigation, right?”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“We should talk about it now.”
They were interrupted by the reporter from WGN who had pushed her way to the front of the yellow tape. Carol Modjeski was a red-haired fireball whose father had run a chop shop on Milwaukee Avenue. “Mojo” had cut her teeth as a fact checker for Mike Royko, and later became the Trib‘s lead crime reporter. Eventually, she took her act to WGN-TV, where her series on payoffs in the First Ward garnered a Pulitzer nomination. She shoved a microphone in front of the chief’s face. “Is this a terrorist act?” she shouted.
Gold had been on the receiving end of her inquisitions on numerous occasions. Don’t engage, Chief.
“The situation is under control,” Maloney insisted. The word “the” came out as “duh.” “We are personally taking charge of this investigation.” He pointed at the Art Institute. “We are setting up our command center across the street.”
Battle leaned over and whispered into Gold’s ear. “What are we doing?”
“We are telling the bad guys where to find us,” Gold muttered. “There wasn’t anything in the playbook in Personnel about dealing with a terrorist attack.”
Maloney’s syntax became more tortured. “Additional emergency personnel is on the way. We ask the good citizens of Chicago to remain calm, cooperate with the police, and disperse in an orderly manner. We guarantee that we will find the people responsible for this senseless act.” He tried to disengage, but Mojo kept firing.
“Are there other bombs?” she shouted.
Maloney froze. He didn’t want to start a panic, but he was reluctant to lie, so he opted for obfuscation. “We’re taking every conceivable precaution.”
“Yes or no: is the public in danger?”
“We will use every available resource to protect the citizens of Chicago.”
“Has anyone claimed responsibility?”
He shot a look at Gold. “Not to my knowledge.”
Mojo’s eyes narrowed. “I saw you talking to Detective Gold. Does he have any additional information?”
Maloney thought about it for an instant, then he motioned to Gold.
Battle muttered just loud enough so that only Gold could hear, “No comment.”
“No comment,” Gold repeated into the microphone.
Mojo was undeterred. “Were you targeted, Detective?”
He didn’t pull my name out of a hat. “No comment.”
“Did someone threaten you?”
“No.” Technically, it wasn’t a lie. The text wasn’t exactly a threat.
“Has anyone contacted you?”
“No comment.”
Mojo’s green eyes gleamed. “Has the FBI been called?”
Maloney answered her. “Yes,” he said, “along with Homeland Security.”
“Doesn’t that suggest this is a terrorist act?”
“It’s a criminal act.” The chief pushed out his jaw. “We aren’t going to let some nutcase set off bombs on Michigan Avenue. That’s it for now.” He pointed at Gold and Battle. “I need to talk to you,” he said, “in private.”
* * *
In his Cubs T-shirt and khaki shorts, the young man blended in easily with a dozen employees and a few early-morning shoppers watching the chief’s impromptu news conference in the sports bar in the basement of the Macy’s in the old Marshall Field’s flagship store. Some people held cell phones to their ears. Most stood in grim silence. The air conditioning was a welcome respite from the blistering heat and the thick smoke outside. The young man’s demeanor remained impassive, but he was nonetheless pleased to see the fear in Maloney’s eyes and the troubled look on Gold’s face.
Your stress is just beginning.
His stoic expression belied a sense of satisfaction bordering on elation. Maloney’s mealy-mouthed reassurances had been a bonus. He would begin the next phase immediately. The police would be on high alert, and the FBI would be called in. He would contact Carol Modjeski. It would enhance his stature if he communicated through the legendary “Mojo.” Above all, he confirmed that his instructors had been right: meticulous planning is, indeed, the key to success.
He pulled out another throwaway phone and discreetly pressed Send. He turned it off and tossed it into a trash can as he headed into the subway.
That should get their attention.
* * *
Gold was standing next to Maloney when his BlackBerry vibrated. He had received another text.
It read, “Free Hassan Al-Shahid or people will die.”
This one’s personal.
As I was finishing my seventh Mike Daley/Rosie Fernandez story, Perfect Alibi, I decided that I wanted to take a little break from the series to write something new. I’m not retiring Mike and Rosie; I still have some new adventures for them. And I wanted to write a story that wasn’t about a lawyer.
I’ve always wanted to write a book set in my hometown of Chicago, and I’ve been promising my mom that I would do it sooner or later. Well, I guess I didn’t do it sooner, so now it’s later. I’m a third generation native of Chicago’s Southeast Side. For those of you who know Chicago, my grandparents lived near old Comiskey Park, then they moved to Hyde Park near the University of Chicago. My grandfather on my mom’s side ran a grocery store at 37th and State on the site of what became the Robert Taylor Homes. My grandfather on my dad’s side sold men’s clothes at several stores in South Chicago for almost fifty years. My parents grew up in Hyde Park. We lived at 74th and Yates in South Shore from 1958 until 1961, then we moved to 92nd and Oglesby. The neighborhood changed in the late sixties, and the police now refer to it as “Terror Town.” We moved to Wilmette in 1970.
For more than a century, South Chicago was an industrial area where the steel mills were located. The largest mill was the U.S. Steel South Works, which extended about two miles along the lakefront from 79th Street to 95th. At its height, about 20,000 people worked there. The mills closed in the nineties, and the area is now a big empty lot awaiting redevelopment. The mills were built in the late 19th Century, and for the next hundred years or so, South Chicago was a thriving community of smokestacks, steeples, schools, stores, bars and restaurants. Generations of Irish, Italian, German, Eastern European, Russian, Polish, Slavic, Mexican and Jewish immigrants came to South Chicago to work in the mills and service the needs of the community. Many of the stores and auto dealerships along the business strip on Commercial Avenue were owned by Jewish merchants. You can still see Hyman’s Ace Hardware at 87th and Commercial. The Goldblatt’s Department store at the corner of 91st and Commercial was the chain’s most lucrative outlet. Large churches such as St. Michael, Immaculate Concepcion, and Our Lady of Guadalupe still serve the community. Congregation Bikkur Cholim had over eight hundred members during the early 20th Century, and was the oldest continuously operating synagogue in the Chicago area until the building was finally sold in 2008. When most of the Jewish families moved to the suburbs in the sixties, Bikkur Cholim began sharing its building with a Baptist Church. Interestingly, its last rabbi was Rabbi Capers Funnye, Jr., who happens to be Michelle Obama’s first cousin. Rabbi Funnye’s little flock of predominantly African-American Jews expanded, and eventually Bikkur Cholim merged with another African American synagogue on the Southwest Side. Rabbi Funnye is now the Senior Rabbi of Beth Shalom B’Nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, one of the largest African American synagogues in the U.S.
I didn’t want to simply write a postcard to my hometown or doing a history of my old neighborhood. I needed a character and a story worthy of South Chicago. The character became Detective David Gold. The story became The Terrorist Next Door.
I have a huge bias—I like to read and write character-driven fiction. I always start with character and find a story as I go. When I started thinking about writing a book set in South Chicago, I wanted to write about somebody who embodied the neighborhood. South Chicago is a blue collar enclave where people work hard, keep their noses clean, and try to create better lives for their kids. Detective David Gold also embodies the values of his parents, a high school teacher and a librarian, who didn’t flee the neighborhood when most of the Jews moved to the suburbs in the sixties and seventies. Harry and Lil Gold had this old fashioned idea that South Chicago was their neighborhood and they weren’t going anywhere. That ethic rubbed off on their son. It also provided an opportunity for me to create characters who embodied the history of the Chicago Jewish Community.
David Gold is a very smart guy. He graduated at the top of his class at the University of Illinois (my alma mater). He went to the University of Chicago Law School for one year, then decided to became a cop in South Chicago. He quickly moved up the ranks to detective. If there is one word to describe him, it’s “relentless.”
When you write crime novels, it helps if your protagonist has access to the criminal justice system. First, it gives your hero a reason to take on a case—it’s his/her job. Second, it gives your character some built-in expertise in criminal investigations. Third, it gives the protagonist access to other people who can solve crimes—other police officers, experts in weapons, explosives, etc. In this respect, I’ve always believed that it’s easier to write a protagonist who is a professional crime-solver than an amateur sleuth. The first instinct of most amateurs (such as yours truly) is to call the cops.
Homicide detectives tend to be more interesting if they are outsiders within the confines of the criminal justice system. Think of Dirty Harry Callahan or Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch (not all detectives have to be named Harry). Detective David Gold is an outsider within Chicago PD. He’s highly decorated and he has an excellent reputation as a detective, but he’s also resented by some of his peers because he doesn’t accept money and he plays by his own moral code. He’s also an outsider in his own neighborhood. South Chicago is now predominantly African American and Hispanic. Gold and his father are among the few remaining white people left in the neighborhood. In the opening scene of The Terrorist Next Door, Gold explains to his new partner, an African-American detective named A.C. Battle, that he still lives in South Chicago because his family was there first—his great-grandfather had immigrated to South Chicago in 1894. Battle (whose family had lived in South Chicago for almost forty years) is surprised to find out that the neighborhood had been all-white and predominantly Catholic and Jewish for almost a century before the African-American community moved in. Gold assures him that there was much more to the story.
Gold has even more baggage. He was widowed when his wife and unborn daughter were killed in a single-car accident on Lake Shore Drive. He lives with his 83 year-old father, who suffers from the aftereffects of a stroke. His longtime partner, Detective Paul Liszewski, was killed when he and Gold stumbled into a bomb-making factory in South Chicago. In fact, the story opens when Gold is about to receive a medal for stopping a terrorist attack—and he’s paired with a more experienced detective—A.C. Battle.
And, of course, it helps if a story has a plot. Since Gold’s partner was killed while they were breaking up a terrorist threat, I decided that Gold and Battle would face another lethal terrorist threat. Over the years I’ve met several people who have worked for the FBI and Homeland Security. They’re terribly concerned about another 9/11, but they also have great concerns about a homegrown terrorist who is working off the grid—a “lone wolf.” One retired FBI agent asked me the following question: “How many people would have died in Times Square if the guy who tried to set off a bomb there hadn’t been such an idiot?” As I pondered the answer, I had the beginnings of my story.
As I began doing research for this book, it became evident to me that my FBI friends’ concerns were well founded. With a few quick strokes on the Internet, it’s absurdly easy for anybody to figure out how to make a bomb. While the authorities have a lot of high tech tracking equipment at their disposal—especially for tracing cell phones—it became clear to me that a really smart terrorist could create a lot of havoc without being traced. It was very frightening. It was also a plotline that I couldn’t resist. I want to make it clear that this book isn’t a manual about how to make bombs. In fact, I’ve included some disinformation to make it harder for somebody to assemble a homemade bomb.
So now you know about the characters and the plot. But there is one more element that I need to discuss—Chicago. I didn’t want to make Chicago just a backdrop in this book. I wanted it to be a character. This is a Chicago story populated with Chicago characters—including the city itself. David Gold is an authentic Chicagoan—hardworking, loyal, honest, smart, and responsible. He’s doesn’t suffer fools. He doesn’t like BS. And, of course, he’s a Sox fan. . . South Chicago is a consummate Chicago neighborhood. It’s changed a lot over the years, but it’s also stayed the same. From the churches to the steel mills to the smoked shrimp at Calumet Fisheries on the 95th Street draw bridge, it still embodies the core values of my hometown. Even though we moved to Wilmette in 1970 when I was twelve years old (and I’ve lived in the San Francisco area since 1980), I still tell people that I’m a South Sider. I hope this is reflected in Detective David Gold and The Terrorist Next Door.
