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The Mummy's Ransom
By Fred Hunter St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2002 Fred Hunter
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-8162-4
CHAPTER 1
MONDAY
At the corner of Dearborn and Ontario, on what had once been a street-level parking lot, there had grown a giant glass wedge roughly the shape of a steam iron. This office tower soared to a height of fifty stories, rising from the center of a three-level square that covered an entire city block. The first two levels of the square were occupied by stores so exclusive and trendy that they served more as tourist attractions than as a marketplace. This generated a turnover that was unparalleled in area malls. A casual shopper stopping into the complex once a month was unlikely to encounter the same stores twice. The third level was designed as an exhibition hall that could house anything from the smaller conventions to larger art shows, and any other event that could be designed to bring potential shoppers through the first two levels.
This was Dolores Tower, named after Louie Dolores, who had designed it and executed its construction, along with many of the other newer buildings that dotted Chicago's most important neighborhoods. Many called the tower a monument to Dolores's ego, an impression that the man himself did nothing to deter. If one stood at the point of the building and looked straight up, the gleaming structure appeared to be cleaving the sky in two. That had been the expressed intention of its designer, according to quotes attributed to him in the local papers.
Critics had been evenly divided in their opinion of the building: half were able to set aside their dislike for the man and praise the design on its own merits; the other half were not able to put aside their personal feelings enough to be fair to someone whom many believed was destroying the integrity of Chicago's landscape.
Louie Dolores had built an empire from humble beginnings. Blessed with an abundantly confident manner, he'd been able to secure the financing necessary to start the Louie Dolores Development Company — Dolores Development, for short — even if it was originally only an office in a trailer on a construction site. The company, which at the outset consisted only of Dolores himself, was responsible for everything from the initial design of buildings through to their completion, including the monumental tasks of wading through the mountains of obstacles to obtaining necessary permits, hiring the right companies to handle all aspects of the construction, and ensuring that the projects would be brought in on time and under budget. As his empire grew, Dolores starting taking over management of properties that his company had built.
As time went on, his work became somewhat easier. He found there were fewer obstacles to getting permits once he had enough money to smooth the way with an invisible trail of well-greased palms. And as his importance as a driving force in the changing face of the city increased, he found himself less troubled by accusations of failing to meet the city's standards in regard to hiring minority companies; and accusations of payoffs to local politicians to obtain land and rights that less important builders would never be allowed; and accusations that his building sites were not the safest.
But most troubling to his critics was Dolores's habit of running roughshod over Chicago's architectural history. Any historic structure that had the misfortune to have been built on prime real estate was in danger if that plat of land became important to Dolores. It didn't matter if it was a last vestige of the city's stunning art deco or buildings designed by the most significant and influential architects of the first half of the twentieth century. Dolores didn't hesitate to tear them down. Often these buildings were razed while the Chicago Commission for Historical Preservation was in the process of mounting a legal battle to protect them. Once the buildings were destroyed, no amount of criticism or protests could restore them, and the projects of Dolores Development went ahead.
However, it wasn't Dolores's building practices that had brought the current crop of protesters to the foot of his tower.
"I can't even see them," said Bill Braverman as he pressed his forehead against the massive window and peered down toward the street.
"Of course you can't," said Dolores. "The angle's too sharp. You saw them when you came in, didn't you?"
Braverman laughed. "Hard to miss a bunch of men in grass skirts and war paint. And the leader's perfect. His costume is the best! They were chanting something. I couldn't tell what."
"It's a chant for the dead. A funeral rite."
Dolores's tone was flat. Braverman had been with him for ten years now and still knew nothing of Chilean culture, although how he could've been expected to recognize a funeral rite is something Dolores himself couldn't have rationally explained. But it seemed to him that his personal assistant had successfully maintained a near-complete ignorance of his employer's heritage. Almost defiantly so. It was just another in what Dolores was beginning to view as his assistant's deficiencies.
"A chant for the dead?" said Braverman, turning away from the window. He pretended not to have noticed Dolores's tone, but it hadn't been lost on him. "That's fitting, isn't it?"
"Not in this case. It's for the recently departed."
The offices of the development company had relocated to the penthouse suite of Dolores Tower when the building had opened two years earlier. Dolores's office had windows facing north and east, giving him a panoramic view of the lake that was virtually unobstructed except for a few lesser towers. Far from the ultramodern furnishings one might have expected, the office was decorated like a den: the walls were Navajo white, the plush carpet a dark tan, and the furniture solid mahogany. A round coffee table and comfortable sling-back chairs were in the corner where the windows met. The west wall was taken up by a long credenza in which the blueprints for the company's many projects were stored, and over it hung several enlarged photos of Southwestern rock formations in deep reds and oranges. On the south wall, directly to the right of the door to the office, was a fully stocked wet bar, and next to it an entertainment center with a black-leather couch facing it. The office was even equipped with a full bath, complete with a glass-enclosed shower stall and gold-plated fixtures.
Louie Dolores sat behind the desk, his elbows resting on its top and his hands clasped together. His coarse black hair was cut short and parted on the left, his nails neatly manicured. In his dark Italian suit, he looked more like a lawyer than a builder.
"Do you want me to call the police?" Bill asked as he took a seat opposite his boss.
"Of course not. They're attracting enough attention without police intervention."
Bill sighed. "You know, you don't need the publicity."
Dolores's black eyes remained impassively leveled at him. "I didn't say I did. But the publicity will be good for the show. It doesn't matter how many ads I take out, or how may puff pieces they do on the news. There's nothing like a protest to get up public interest."
"They certainly look nutty enough to draw public notice."
Dolores smiled. "The nuttier the better. Makes it more likely we'll get camera crews out here. Especially after they hear about this."
He reached into the center drawer of his desk and pulled out a single sheet of soiled paper, which he tossed across the desk. Braverman picked it up and read it:
YOU DESECRATE, YOU DIE
The words "you" and "die" had been cut out whole from a magazine, and the word "desecrate" had been assembled letter by letter, apparently from the same source.
"Where did you get this?" Braverman asked, pushing the paper back across the desk.
"I found it on my windshield last night."
Braverman looked up. "Your windshield? Here? That means someone got into the garage."
"Yes."
"So you want me to call the police now, right?"
"No, Bill," Dolores said with the measured impatience of someone tired of repeating what his listener should already know, "I want you to call Channel 5."
* * *
"Everything's in place," said Ross Lipman, head of security for the tower. Lipman was a short, slender man with very white skin and a thin, black mustache. "We've been working on the space for weeks. We just finished it up this morning."
"This building ... this hall ... they are secure?" Hector Gonzalez asked doubtfully as they rode the escalator up to the third-floor exhibition hall.
"Christ, yeah! It's tight as a drum. I see to that. Christ himself couldn't get in here without passing through security. Not even for the Second Coming!"
"I see." Gonzalez didn't smile. In fact, he hadn't smiled once in the six months since the museum had agreed to put the bulk of its valuable collection out on loan. Actually, "on loan" wasn't exactly the term he would have used for this enterprise. What was happening was far from that.
At the top of the escalator there was a broad lobby with deep-red carpeting like one might find in a large, elegant theater. Across the lobby was a convex glass wall, behind which a heavy curtain masked the interior.
"As you can see," Lipman explained, "there are four doors, but only two'll be used for the exhibition: one for the entrance and one for the exit. Inside, visitors will follow their way through this long winding-like hallway, with bits of the exhibit set up here and there. You'll be really impressed, I think. Mr. Dolores designed it himself."
"Yes. I saw the plans."
"It looks just like one of those tombs."
"You mean an Egyptian tomb?" Gonzalez said with resigned disapproval. This was exactly what he'd been afraid of when he'd seen the designs. "They weren't found in tombs. They were in common graves."
Lipman stopped before reaching the center door. "Huh?"
"Common graves. Piled one on top of the other."
Lipman wrinkled his nose. "Well ... well, we can't display 'em like that, now, can we? In a big heap!"
"No, we couldn't." Gonzalez realized it would be worthless to try to explain why they shouldn't be displayed as if they were in an Egyptian tomb, either.
"Hi, Al," Lipman said to the large man in a blue uniform who stood guarding the entrance.
"Mr. Lipman," Al returned, snapping a salute. He grabbed the handle and pulled the door open for them.
"This is Dr. Gonzalez," Lipman said. "From the Archaeological Museum of Chile. He should be allowed in and out without any problem, anytime he wants. Got it?"
"Got it. He got a badge?"
"Oh, yes, yes," Gonzalez said, patting his pockets. "I'm sorry. I stuck it in my pocket. I wasn't thinking."
"That's okay, sir," Al said jovially, "since you're here with Mr. Lipman. But you should wear it at all times, so none of the security people will stop you."
"Yes, yes, I'm sorry." He plunged his hand into his right pants pocket and his face relaxed when his fingers touched the smooth plastic cover. He scratched a finger slightly on the clothespin-like metal clip as he pulled the badge out, and turned a confused frown to Lipman. "Where should I wear it?"
Lipman patted his own tag, clipped to his breast pocket.
"Oh, of course." As Gonzalez affixed the badge, he turned to Al. "Thank you, young man."
"That's all right, sir. Just trying to save you some trouble."
"Let's go in," said Lipman. He led the way through the door and into a narrow, low-ceilinged hallway. The lighting, subdued to a predawn glow, was so well disguised it seemed to radiate from the arched ceiling, and music emanated eerily from hidden speakers. The music was a combination of rattles, drums, and wooden flutes, reverently muted. The walls and ceiling were a very light tan, and finely textured. Gonzalez reached out and touched the nearest wall.
"Sand?"
"Yes, sir," Lipman replied. "Mr. Dolores thought of everything."
"So it seems."
They continued down the hallway. At intervals on the walls there were plaques next to empty brackets on which the photos and artists' renderings would be hung. At farther intervals the walls opened into large chambers where the real attractions would be displayed.
Attractions, thought Gonzalez with a silent "humph." That they would ever be thought of as attractions!
"This is the first of the display areas," said Lipman as they came to a bend in the hallway. What had looked like a slight recess from a distance gave way to a chamber large enough for several display cases and the expected crowd.
"There seems to be room enough," Gonzalez said, "but the hallway is too narrow for the housings in which the mummies are being transported."
"Not to worry." Lipman went to the back wall. "This looks solid, but it's just latched shut on the back, you see. This whole wall pulls out and the cases will be brought right up into place and dropped."
"What?" Gonzalez exclaimed in horror.
Lipman was confused for a moment, then realized what had caused the older man's reaction. "Sorry. That's a figure of speech. 'Course, everybody's gonna be extra careful with them."
"Those mummies, young man, were here before the Christ, whose name you bandy about so freely! And once they were exposed to air and ... everything else ... they are deteriorating. Do you understand? The slightest trauma to them causes further deterioration."
Lipman's cheeks reddened, and he spoke as if surprised to discover he was dealing with some sort of fanatic who had to be placated. "I understand, Doc, I understand. Really, it was just a figure of speech."
After a long pause, Gonzalez sighed wearily. He'd been shocked into this outburst. Now that he'd made it, he didn't know why he'd bothered.
"Let's move on," he said.
Although the Egyptian influence of the tomblike hallway was unmistakable, Gonzalez couldn't deny that the plan for the exhibit was well-thought-out. The artifacts were going to be arranged along the time line that radiocarbon dating had proven, from the most recent to the earliest. It would give even the most emotionally dead visitors the feeling of descending back in time.
Emotionally dead, Gonzalez thought with another humph.
"Beg pardon?" said Lipman.
"Nothing."
When they passed the last of the display areas, the hallway narrowed further before opening into the exit. It was something of a shock to come back into the bright light of the lobby. Gonzalez also found it disquieting when he realized they had come out of the door only twenty feet to the right of where Al stood guarding the entrance.
Gonzalez turned to Lipman. "It doesn't seem possible."
"What?"
"Even though I saw Mr. Dolores's design beforehand, and I knew it was circular, I wasn't aware of turning back so much that we would end up so close to the entrance."
Lipman smiled. "Oh! That! Yeah. There's a turn after each one of those little room things."
"Of course," Gonzalez said. Now that he thought back, he felt foolish for not noticing. It was like a series of boomerangs, sometimes arced, sometimes S-shaped, with the chambers at the center of the turns. From each chamber you could see back the way you'd come and forward into the next hall, but you couldn't see from one hall to the next.
"Very clever," he said without emotion.
"It meets with your approval, doesn't it?" Lipman asked.
As much as any of this could, he thought. "Yes. What are those?" He pointed to one of the long glass counters located at either end of the lobby.
"Those? Concession stands, of course."
Gonzalez turned his sad brown eyes on the head of security. "Faces of the dead on T-shirts?"
Lipman nodded happily. "And key chains. And little statues. Coloring books. Stuff like that. People love that sort of thing."
"Tell me, Mr. Lipman," Gonzalez said after a pause, "did you see those people protesting out on the street?"
"The nuts? Sure did!"
"It would seem not everyone loves that sort of thing."
Lipman's face went blank. "Huh? You're not worried about them pulling something, are you? Don't you worry about anything. They won't get in here!"
"They don't worry me. They interest me."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Mummy's Ransom by Fred Hunter. Copyright © 2002 Fred Hunter. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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