The Terrorist Next Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

explosives.”
    “Maybe.”
    Gold’s BlackBerry vibrated. The display indicated that he had a text from an unidentified source. He tried to send a reply, but it didn’t go through. Finally, he opened the text and showed it to Fong.
    It read, “Are you going to take us seriously now, Detective Gold?”
     
     

 
    Chapter 5
    THE SHRINE OF HEAVEN
     
    Supervisory Special Agent George Fong was having a bad day in the middle of a miserable month in what was rapidly becoming a horrible year. The most decorated agent in the history of the FBI’s Chicago office was sweating through his gray suit as he stood in the beer garden behind Murphy’s.
    “Got a trace?” Gold asked.
    “Working on it,” Fong said.
    “Work faster.”
    Fong didn’t let his frustration show. After graduating at the top of his class from Northwestern Law School twenty-four years earlier, the Chinatown native had turned down offers from the State’s Attorney and several downtown law firms to join the Bureau. He quickly established himself as the go-to guy on Chinatown’s gambling rackets and gangs, then he dismantled the Outfit’s stranglehold on the First Ward. After Nine-Eleven, he was tapped to form Chicago’s Joint Terrorism Task Force modeled on a similar unit in New York. A month earlier, he had been on the short list for a top job at Quantico. Then his wife had filed for divorce, his brother was diagnosed with colon cancer, and Paulie Liszewski had died in South Chicago. Now he lived by himself in a studio apartment near the United Center, his brother was undergoing chemotherapy, Liszewski’s widow was a single mother, and somebody was setting off bombs on the streets of Chicago.
    Fong glanced at a red-faced young man with multiple tattoos who was screaming at a Chicago cop outside the crime scene tape. The kid was trying to get to work at a souvenir stand on Addison, and the cop wasn’t letting him through. Fong pressed his BlackBerry against his ear. “You gotta give me something,” he barked.
    His subordinate answered in an even tone. “The text was initiated by a Motorola throwaway purchased for cash at a Target in Cal City on April fifteenth. Serviced by T-Mobile. Pinged a tower downtown. We’ve contacted the store to check security video.”
    Fong passed along the information to Gold.
    “We need T-Mobile to shut down their throwaways, too,” Gold said.
    “Done. We’re still waiting to hear from the other carriers.”
    “What’s the delay?”
    “Lawyers.” Fong looked on as Gold and Battle started walking toward the Crown Vic. “Where are you going?”
    “Polish Town,” Gold said.
    * * *
    A bearded young man opened the reinforced steel door just far enough to get a good look at Gold. “Peace be upon you,” he recited.
    “And upon you,” Gold said.
    He and Battle were huddled beneath a narrow overhang in a futile attempt to dodge the thunderstorm passing over the North Side at ten-thirty on Monday morning. The sidewalks were empty. Traffic was heavy on Milwaukee Avenue, where cops were now positioned at every major intersection. The Shrine of Heaven Mosque sat smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood of squat bungalows and three-story apartment buildings that the mapmakers still referred to as Avondale, but the natives stubbornly called Polish Town. It was housed in a one-story brick building wedged between a Polish bakery and a Puerto Rican grocery on the east side of Milwaukee Avenue, across the street from the stacked neon letters spelling out the name of the Logan Theater. The Shrine of Heaven would have been more aptly named the Shrine of Privacy. Its windows were bricked over, and the only evidence of its existence was a hand-lettered note taped above the doorbell. News vans were parked in front on Milwaukee Avenue. It was only a matter of time before the helicopters arrived.
    “We’re closed,” the young man said. “Painting.”
    Gold’s lungs filled with the sweet aroma of cheese babka from the bakery