‘You’ve got power of attorney?’ the doctor asked.
‘We’ve got each other’s back. What’re the odds?’
The doctor hesitated. ‘I really can’t say—’
‘Give me the fucking numbers,’ Marty said. ‘What’s his chances?’
The doctor frowned. ‘Twenty percent?’
Marty nodded and said, ‘I could fucking kill you.’
An hour later, Rodman and Kelson left. Janet had fallen asleep, breathing thickly from her thick throat. Marty sat with his eyes wide and hard, digging at the fabric on his pants with his fingers.
A little after one a.m., Kelson and Rodman got into Kelson’s car and spun through the radio stations, searching for news.
So soon after the explosion, the police and FBI were releasing few facts and just starting to eliminate possibilities.
The blast occurred at four fifty-four p.m.
It might have come from a backpack the homeless man set on the table by his computer.
No gas lines ran through or under that part of the library.
Standard computer electronics and the network between the machines had no explosive components.
Five people were hospitalized. The baby girl went home with her dad.
No one had claimed responsibility for the blast.
There was no reason to think foreign or domestic terrorists were responsible.
There was no reason to think they weren’t.
The police were releasing no names.
The mayor, the governor, and the president were demanding answers.
‘Blah, blah, blah,’ Kelson said.
‘It’s too soon,’ Rodman said.
‘Blah, blah, blah.’
They drove north through the city, wending through late-night streets toward the Rogers Park Library, and stopped before a line of blue barricades on Clark Street. Cops guarded the barricades, holding back a crowd of spectators. A dozen news trucks and vans had parked at angles on the street, their microwave transmission masts poking at the sky like stingers. Grim-faced reporters, blinking under artificial light, talked to the news cameras. Beyond the barricades, shattered window glass shimmered on the sidewalk and street. Part of the front wall had burst outward. Broken brick rubble and wooden framing were piled over a mangled book-return box. Electrical wires hung from the wall over the blown-out hole. The air was still and cool and smelled of smoke and dust.
Kelson and Rodman shouldered through the crowd and approached a young uniformed cop.
‘Who’s the officer in charge?’ Kelson asked.
The cop stared at him as if he’d spoken another language.
‘My name’s Sam Kelson – ex-CPD, Narcotics.’
‘Ex?’ the cop said. ‘You need to step back, sir. We have our hands full tonight.’
‘Who’s in charge?’ Kelson asked again.
The cop seemed to look through him.
Rodman stepped forward. The top of the barricade came to his thighs. He leaned down at the cop. He let his eyelids hang lazily over his eyes and gave the cop a gentle smile. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘asked you who’s in charge.’
The cop looked annoyed but also scared. ‘Lieutenant Jillian Richard’s got lead.’
‘Who else is here?’ Kelson asked. ‘Dan Peters? Venus Johnson?’
‘Richard has about half of the homicide unit with her. All I know, I keep my mouth shut and eyes open. That means you’re keeping me from doing my job.’
‘Check for Peters and Johnson,’ Rodman said.
The cop looked up at the enormous man. Anyone could see he wanted to object. But Rodman gave him more of his gentle smile, more of his lazy gaze, and, like most men facing a polite monster who seemed capable of extraordinary violence, the cop did as he was told. He talked on his radio to a commander. Then he told Rodman, ‘Yeah, Venus Johnson’s working the scene. No, I won’t ask to talk to her. No, you can’t go in and find her yourselves.’
So Kelson and Rodman stood with the rest of the crowd, watching and listening, breathing the heavy air as if making it a part of them would help them understand what had happened. After a while, a very dark-skinned, solid-legged woman in a blue jacket stepped into the street from the far side of the library building. Kelson thought he recognized Venus Johnson, and he yelled, ‘Venus,’ but the woman disappeared around the other side. He yelled again – and again – until people in the crowd stared at him, and Rodman put a hand on his shoulder to quiet him. Then three officers dressed in white forensics suits came out of the ruined front of the library. ‘Snowmen,’ Kelson said, and more people stared at him. Twenty minutes later, when Venus Johnson came back out from the side of the building, Kelson yelled again, ‘Venus.’
She turned toward his voice, then seemed to think better of it and walked toward a mobile command truck.
Kelson yelled louder. ‘Venus Johnson—’
When Johnson spun back toward Kelson, she looked as if she wanted to vent her fear, anger, and sadness – all of the emotions that had roared into her during the terrible evening.
She crossed to the barricades and said, ‘You’re a goddamned vulture. What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Was it the homeless man?’ Kelson asked.
‘I said, what the hell—’
‘A friend’s nephew was in there,’ Kelson said. ‘He’s hurt. Bad. I promised to find out what I could.’
Johnson blinked, and her energy seemed to drain. ‘Ah, shit,’ she said. She turned away, then turned back, as if she would apologize. Instead, she yelled at the crowd. ‘Vultures.’ She walked off and disappeared into the command truck.
ELEVEN
Kelson slept for three hours and woke with a raging headache. He popped two Percocets, and the sharp pain dulled to a throb and then became a heavy cloud. He showered and poured three bowls of Cheerios – one for himself and one for each of the kittens. He added milk and laid a slice of ham over the top of the kittens’ bowls. He set the bowls on the dining table, put the kittens on the table by them, and sat for breakfast. Payday’s tail swung in time with her lapping tongue. Painter’s Lane closed her eyes as she ate.
After washing the dishes, Kelson checked the news.
The dead homeless man’s name was Victor Almonte – thirty-one years old, an army vet who served a tour in Afghanistan, born in St Louis to a local girl and her Dominican boyfriend, in Chicago since leaving the army. The dead woman’s name was Amy Runeski – twenty-four, unemployed, separated from her husband, living with her two-year-old daughter in a friend’s Rogers Park apartment, using the library computers as she went through divorce proceedings.
‘The husband?’ Kelson asked Payday. His stomach turned as he imagined a man hurting his daughter. ‘If so, I’ll kill him.’ Then, to reassure Painter’s Lane, ‘Not literally.’ Then, to Payday, ‘Maybe literally.’
But an unnamed FBI source pointed at the homeless man’s backpack. The pack – the little that remained of it – may have had a suspicious object in it. An FBI lab was testing it.
Still, no one had claimed responsibility. The mayor warned the public against jumping to conclusions. ‘At this point, we don’t know,’ he said. ‘We’re investigating all possible causes, including accidental.’
‘I don’t like accidents,’ Kelson said to Painter’s Lane. ‘Or chance.’ He looked at Payday. ‘Or even statistics – much. Twenty percent chance Neto will live? No, he either lives – a hundred percent – or dies – a hundred percent.’
Payday meowed at Kelson.
‘Yeah,’ Kelson said, ‘I’ll shut the hell up.’
So he dialed Rodman’s apartment and, when his friend picked up, asked, ‘You asleep?’
‘What’s sleep?’ Rodman said.
‘Any word on Neto?’
‘He’s hanging on. Marty’s a wreck. I’m heading over to give him a break.’
‘I’ll see you there,’ Kelson said.
An hour later, he walked into the internal waiting room at the University of Chicago Trauma Center.
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Janet was eating a Hostess berries and cheese Danish from a vending machine.
Rodman was staring out a window at a little garden.
Marty had pulled two armchairs so they faced each other. He stretched on his back between them, his short legs splayed over the armrests. His eyes were wide and hard, staring at the ceiling tiles.
Kelson said, ‘Hey.’
Janet kept eating.
Rodman kept looking out the window.
Marty kept staring at the ceiling, but he asked, ‘Why’d G&G send Neto to that library? Did they do this?’
‘Why would they blow up their own operation?’ Kelson said. ‘Seems like the worst thing they could do. But it’s a bad coincidence that Neto was there – and I don’t like coincidences.’
Rodman turned from the window. ‘The mayor says it could be a problem in the building.’
‘Do you believe that?’ Kelson said.
‘No.’
Janet said, ‘It’s the homeless guy.’
Rodman said, ‘What kind of homeless guy blows up a library?’
‘He comes back from Afghanistan messed in the head,’ she said. ‘He’s living outside. He’s mad at the government. I’ve got a cousin went to Afghanistan.’
‘Your cousin blows up libraries?’ Kelson said.
‘He manages a Long John Silver’s. But he has bad dreams.’
‘The homeless guy didn’t do it,’ Rodman said.
‘It isn’t the girl,’ Janet said. ‘She’s getting a divorce. She’s got a baby. Why would she kill herself?’
‘The husband,’ Kelson said.
Rodman nodded his big head. ‘Maybe the husband.’
Janet put the last of the Danish in her mouth. ‘The bastard.’
Marty sat up on the chairs. He seemed to have heard none of the conversation. ‘Why’d G&G send Neto there?’ he said again, then asked Kelson, ‘Will you talk to them? See what’s what? If DeMarcus goes, they’ll see this big black dude and they’ll worry. But you, you’re – you look …’ He searched for the word.
‘Ineffectual,’ Janet said.
‘You, they don’t worry so much,’ Marty said.
Janet tapped her forehead. ‘Hole in the brain. You don’t fool no one.’
Kelson said, ‘Anything for you, Marty.’
G&G kept third-story offices in a business park in Mundelein, forty miles north of the city. Skinny tinted windows squinted from between scrubbed white concrete panels on the outside of the building. The inside – the lobby, the elevator, the third-floor hallway, the G&G reception area – smelled like floor polish.
When Kelson asked the receptionist if Sylvia Crane, Harold Crane, or Chip Voudreaux could talk with him about Neto LeCoeur, she raised her eyebrows and phoned into the inner offices.
A minute later, a man in a navy blue suit, barely pink shirt, and blue tie came out to reception. He wore his curly brown hair short, had watery gray eyes, and had done something to his teeth that made them unpleasantly white. He offered to shake Kelson’s hand, said, ‘Chip Voudreaux,’ and asked Kelson to follow him to his office.
Another man, in his late sixties, with a beakish nose and sharp blue eyes, came to the office door across from Voudreaux’s and glared at Kelson as he walked past. Voudreaux ignored the man, sat at a dark-wood desk, crossed his fingers on top, and asked, ‘How can I help you?’
‘Did you blow up Neto LeCoeur?’ Kelson said.
A faint smile appeared on the man’s thin lips. ‘I don’t know who—’
‘I’m friends with Neto’s uncle, Marty LeCoeur. Long story short …’ He explained his past as a narcotics cop, his current work as a private investigator, how he knew Marty LeCoeur, and how he met Neto.
After a few minutes, Voudreaux interrupted him. ‘I could deny I’ve ever met Neto or his uncle.’
‘But you won’t?’
‘If I did, no one could prove otherwise. We’re exceedingly careful. No company-related phone records. Nothing on paper. Nothing anyone but the very best analysts could track electronically. If you look for the LeCoeurs here, you won’t even see their ghosts.’
‘So why don’t you deny you know them?’
Voudreaux frowned again. ‘We have a bigger problem.’
‘Bigger than two dead and five people blown apart?’ Kelson said.
‘Depending on whose perspective. It seems that just before the explosion at the library, your boy diverted our funds.’
‘He did what?’
‘Every penny,’ Voudreaux said. ‘He initially transferred the money as we instructed him to, but as he finished, he did – something. The money disappeared from our clients’ accounts. We can only assume it reappeared in an account of his own.’
‘How much?’
Voudreaux pressed his lips together, then said, ‘Thirty-seven million.’ He was sweating behind his tie. ‘Give or take.’
‘Ha,’ Kelson said.
‘You know the kind of people he stole from?’
Kelson grinned at him. ‘The kind who hire fools like you.’
Voudreaux seemed to consider the suggestion. ‘I suppose so. The kind who make rules work for them, and if the rules stop working they break them and make new ones. The kind who brook no interference with their plans and dreams.’
Kelson still grinned. ‘They “brook no interference”? How did Neto even do this?’
Voudreaux glared at him. ‘That’s what we expect Neto to tell us. If not Neto, his uncle. If they don’t …’ He left that hanging.
‘Seems to me you’re in more danger than he is,’ Kelson said. ‘Your clients will come after you. They gave you the money. You lost it.’
‘We expect the LeCoeurs to return the money. Within twenty-four hours.’
‘Or else? You pull out the hunting knife?’
Voudreaux allowed himself a smile. ‘That was a joke. I bought it as a gift for my father. But you’re right again. Our clients will come for my blood and the blood of my colleagues. But they’ll want more.’
‘Nice business you’re running.’
‘I hear Neto is still unconscious. I recommend that his uncle get right to work. Find the money. Give it back. Maybe the investors can remain ignorant of Neto’s indiscretion.’ Voudreaux stood up from his desk to let Kelson know he was done talking to him.
Kelson said, ‘You never answered my question. Did you try to kill him?’
Voudreaux stared at him with his watery gray eyes. ‘I assure you, we did not.’
TWELVE
Kelson drove back to the hospital. The staff had moved Marty, Janet, and Rodman to a smaller room, without a window. Kelson gave Marty Voudreaux’s demand, and the little man said, ‘Fuck him.’
Kelson agreed. ‘He seems like a fool.’
‘He’s a fucking prick,’ Marty said.
‘You’d better do it, though,’ Kelson said. ‘Voudreaux said G&G will go after Neto if they don’t get their money – and go after you too.’
Rodman said, ‘I should’ve gone with. Talked sense into Voudreaux.’
‘Wouldn’t’ve made a difference,’ Marty said. ‘These guys mean it.’
‘Can you get the money?’ Rodman asked.
‘Fuck if I know how. Neto’s got tricks I never learned. Million-buck three-card Monte. I’m good – he’s something else.’
‘Then you should give this to the cops or the feds,’ Kelson said.
The little man looked furious. ‘Don’t be an asshole. I go to the cops, I’m done. The cops kick my ass. Or they listen, and I testify, and then if I’m lucky – if I get a great fucking lawyer who gets me a great fucking deal – they throw me in a single-wide in Phoenix. ’Cause I knew a guy – lasted two months before he hanged himself in his closet.’
Rodman let his lazy eyelids hang low. ‘Then you better get to work. You have all you need?’
‘I don’t know what I need,’ Marty said. ‘I’ve got to go to G&G and find out. They’ve got the info about the accounts and the passwords Neto used
to get into them.’
‘You should stay here with Neto,’ Janet said.
‘What fucking good?’ Marty said. ‘I do more for him if I clean this mess.’
‘I’ll go with,’ Rodman said. ‘Maybe they need to see what they’re up against.’
Janet agreed to stay and relay updates on Neto. Kelson agreed to look into the dead victims – Victor Almonte and Amy Runeski. So Marty and Rodman drove to Mundelein, and Kelson drove to the Harrison Street Police Station.
No, said the man at the station desk, Venus Johnson wouldn’t talk to him.
‘Try Darrin Malinowski from Narcotics,’ Kelson said. ‘He used to be my boss.’
‘You’re wasting my time,’ the deskman said, but he dialed the extension for the narcotics unit and explained what Kelson wanted.
Instead of having the deskman send Kelson back, Malinowski came out to talk.
Kelson said, ‘That look on your face – it’s what people do when they meet someone they feel bad for.’
‘Take it how you want,’ Malinowski said.
‘I need to talk with Johnson.’
‘You know that won’t happen right now.’
‘I’ve got information for her. Neto LeCoeur is one of the victims – he’s at the U of C Trauma Center.’ Then, because Malinowski stared at him with flat incomprehension and because Kelson couldn’t help himself, he told him what he’d promised to keep secret. ‘Neto got tangled in a big financial scam. He’s got a record for this kind of thing going back to when he was a teenager. He was doing it again when the library blew up.’
Malinowski twisted his lips. ‘How do you know this?’
‘I’m pals with Neto’s uncle. Sort of.’
‘Jesus, Kelson, what are you mixed up in now?’ But the commander dialed the homicide unit on the deskman’s phone. He got Venus Johnson on the line and told her she should give Kelson a minute. Then he ushered Kelson into the department.
Johnson met them at the door to the homicide room.
‘You look wiped out,’ Kelson said.
‘Yep.’
‘Ragged.’
‘Lousy to see you too, Kelson.’ She walked him to her cubicle.
Styrofoam coffee cups, a Coke can, and a couple of paper plates with the remnants of delivery food littered her desk. An architectural rendering of the Rogers Park Library showed on her computer screen.
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