She said, ‘Sit. Talk. Then get out.’
‘Tell me about Victor Almonte,’ he said.
‘Don’t even think it. Malinowski said you have information about one of the injured.’
‘Neto LeCoeur,’ Kelson said. ‘What about Amy Runeski’s husband? Any chance he did it?’
‘Did what? We haven’t determined if—’
‘Bullshit,’ Kelson said. ‘You put out the details. Homeless vet. Divorce. The news will name one of them as a suspect by tonight.’
‘Watch the news then,’ Johnson said. ‘Malinowski said you’ve got something. If you don’t, leave. I’m running thirty hours without sleep, and unless things break cleaner than they’re going to, I’m looking at another thirty.’
Kelson said, ‘A holding company called G&G Private Equity hired Neto LeCoeur to transfer funds into their clients’ accounts. Some of the accounts might be legal, but most probably aren’t. It’s offshore money laundering, but I don’t know the details. Neto was sitting next to Amy Runeski when the place blew. He’s sleeping in a hospital bed now. The doctor says eighty percent chance he’ll never wake up, though I don’t believe in odds.’
‘Hold on,’ Johnson said. ‘A company hired him to do this from a library?’
‘I know. G&G uses public computers for their distributions. I guess that keeps their own machines clean. They move around a lot of money. Millions. Tens of millions.’
Johnson breathed in deep through closed teeth. ‘They had a guy – called Neto – move millions – we’re talking about dollars?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Neto moved these millions from a rat-shit computer at a rat-shit library?’
‘You want to write this down?’
Johnson closed her eyes.
Kelson said, ‘You need to talk to a man named Chip Vou—’
‘Yeah, I’ll do that,’ Johnson said. ‘Meantime, I’ve got a shitload of work. And next time you have a story for me, you write down the details, OK? All the details.’
She stared at him. He stared back.
She said, ‘Take your time – write it neat. Use big letters – easy to read. Use goddamned crayons. Then take the paper and wipe your ass with it. Flush it down the toilet. Don’t come and stink up my life with it.’
The news that night said that eleven months after Victor Almonte returned from Afghanistan the police charged him with arson for torching a sofa at his sister’s house. Since then, they’d arrested him twice, once for trespassing and once for shoplifting. After the library blast, the police found a mangled coil of wire and part of a radio transmitter in his shredded backpack. Fox News added a scoop – in Afghanistan, Almonte served as an ordnance disposal specialist, disarming IEDs. And CBS interviewed Emma Almonte, Victor’s sister, outside a little tan-brick house on North Keeler. ‘My brother couldn’t do this,’ she told the camera with a slight Dominican accent. ‘No, no, no, no, no.’
‘Huh,’ Kelson said.
NBC aired a news conference where Amy Runeski’s husband Tom clutched his baby daughter to his chest. He asked for everyone’s prayers. He was tall and blond and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He’d slapped a Looney Tunes Band-Aid on one of his daughter’s cheeks.
Kelson said, ‘Picture perfect.’
The baby daughter worried him, so he turned off the TV and called Sue Ellen. Her voice made him happy.
‘What’s new, honey?’ he said.
‘I hate polynomials.’
‘Tough day at school?’
‘Polynomials suck.’
‘You hear the one about the polynomial?’
‘No dad jokes,’ she said.
‘But where would we be without polynomials?’
‘Good night, Dad,’ she said.
‘Stay away from libraries, OK?’
‘What?’
‘Watch YouTube. Play online poker.’
‘Dad …?’
‘Just thinking – books are overrated, you know?’
‘Really?’
‘I mean, I want you to watch out for yourself. Be safe.’
‘You’re weird, Dad.’
‘I know.’
At eleven o’clock, he turned out the light. Lying in bed, he realized he’d never heard back from Genevieve Bower. He turned on the light again and called. Her line rang and rang, and when it went to voicemail, he said, ‘Huh’ again, and hung up. Then he said, ‘I’ve got to stop saying “huh”.’ He turned off the light and closed his eyes. With Payday sleeping by his feet and Painter’s Lane on the pillow by his face, he dreamed of fire.
THIRTEEN
In the morning, the FBI released the video from the Rogers Park Library security camera. Lying in bed, Kelson watched it on his phone.
A grainy image with washed-out colors showed a wooden table with ten computers on it. Ten people – old, young, well-dressed, disheveled – sat at the table. A scruffy-haired, brown-skinned man in an orange T-shirt sat with his back to the camera at one end of the table. A gray-green backpack rested by his computer. A round-shouldered white woman in jeans and a green sweatshirt sat next to him. The baby girl whose father Kelson had seen in a press conference sat in a stroller next to the woman. After a moment, the woman – staring at her computer screen – dangled a wrist into the stroller, and the girl reached with the tiniest of hands and held her mother’s pinkie. Kelson’s stomach fell. ‘Ah, shit,’ he said. Next to the woman, Neto’s fingers touched the keyboard keys as if his mind had fused with the electronic circuitry. ‘Like a pianist,’ Kelson said, as Neto clinked the enter key, raised his hand, let his fingers play across the other keys, and clinked enter again. ‘Even a kind of joy.’
Then, in an instant, the scene disintegrated. An obliterating dust shot through the room, the image melted and ripped, and the video went dark. ‘Like a bullet in the head,’ Kelson said. He watched a second time, trying to freeze the video at the moment of the blast. ‘How do they know it’s the backpack?’ he said. He watched a third time and said, ‘No.’
He got out of bed. ‘No what?’ He went into the bathroom, followed by the kittens. ‘Just no.’ He looked down at Payday. ‘No.’ As he stood at the toilet, he said, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no.’
He showered.
He went to the kitchen.
‘No appetite,’ he told Painter’s Lane. But he poured three bowls of Cheerios, topping the kittens’ bowls with sliced salami. ‘No headache either, though,’ he told Payday. ‘The fire must’ve burned it out.’
Before clearing the dishes, Kelson called Genevieve Bower’s number again. Again her line rang and rang. ‘No one.’
He drove back to the U of C Trauma Center.
Rodman sat alone in the little waiting room, his eyes closed, his enormous back spread over the chair. As Kelson came in, Rodman opened his eyes and reached for his hip. He had no gun on his hip.
‘Get yourself hurt that way,’ Kelson said.
‘Old habits,’ Rodman said.
‘Where’s Marty?’
‘Still at G&G. You know what those people are.’
‘You let them keep him?’
‘He decided to stay. He knows he’s got to fix the wreck Neto caused. They gave him some codes and passwords and set him up with all kinds of computers. Tell the truth, if he’d wanted to leave they could’ve kept him anyway. I’ll fight big guys like me with or without a gun. But little white people in suits intimidate the hell out of me. They push a button, and sixteen security guys pop up. They make a call, and twenty suburban cops drop in. You know, G&G have a file on Marty an inch thick. After yesterday, I’ll bet they have files on you and me.’
‘You met Chip Voudreaux?’
‘And Sylvia Crane. She does this act, except it isn’t an act. Voudreaux kids around with the hunting knife. Sylvia Crane is the real thing.’
Tough women excited Kelson – and he said so.
‘You,’ said Rodman, ‘are one messed-up dude.’
‘Any word on Neto?’
‘Still sleepin
g,’ Rodman said. ‘Bleeding from the brain again. They do some kind of reflex test on the eyeball – Neto doesn’t have it. Marty needs to decide.’
‘Nothing’s worse.’
‘Doing nothing about it is worse.’
Kelson considered that. ‘Want to get out of here for a while?’
They drove out to Emma Almonte’s address on Keeler Avenue and parked at the curb behind a Ford Focus with a Proud Family of a Veteran sticker on the bumper. Emma Almonte’s tan-brick house had pinched little windows with little metal awnings over them. A double security floodlight faced the street from under a gutter. An American flag stuck from a metal bracket below the security light. Burglar bars covered the front door. A wide ribbon embroidered with roses hung from a nail between the door and the bars. It swung in the breeze when Kelson knocked. Emma Almonte made him and Rodman explain who they were and why they’d come for ten minutes before opening and letting them in.
Beyond the little entry hall, the front room smelled clean, though the white rug showed threads in the middle. Most of the furniture looked old and worn.
‘Except the couch,’ Kelson said, as he and Rodman stepped inside.
‘I’m sorry?’ she said.
‘New,’ he said. ‘After your brother …’ He mimed lighting a match.
Her cheeks colored. ‘Yes.’ She was about five and a half feet tall, with a wide, olive-brown face and coral lipstick.
‘You’ve got great lips,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry?’
Rodman cut him off. ‘Victor stayed with you when he came back from Afghanistan?’
She watched Kelson as if he might bite but said, ‘Until last week.’ She gestured toward a closed door. ‘I gave him a room.’
‘So he wasn’t really homeless,’ Kelson said.
‘Can we look?’ Rodman asked.
She opened the bedroom door. ‘Victor didn’t have much,’ she said. ‘Changes of clothes. A phone. What he brought back from the army. It makes no sense.’
A roll-down shade hung over the single window. A blue cotton spread stretched over the bed, the sides and corners tucked so the top looked flat and springy. A striped rectangular throw rug, its long side aligned perfectly with the side of the bed, lay on the floor. Kelson crossed the room to the dresser. Almonte had arranged a few of his possessions in a row on top. A black, big-toothed comb. An electric beard trimmer, its cord coiled. A Timex, its band stretched out. A pair of aviator sunglasses.
‘Neat freak,’ Kelson said.
‘Even before he went into the army,’ Emma Almonte said. ‘More when he came out.’
‘He looked dirty in the library video.’
‘It makes no sense.’
Kelson touched the top dresser drawer. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Go ahead. There’s nothing.’
Two pairs of underwear and two pairs of black socks lay in one corner of the top drawer, two shirts and a sweater in the second drawer. The third drawer was empty. Neatly folded sweatpants and a pair of pajama shorts lay in the bottom drawer.
‘He left without saying goodbye,’ she said.
Kelson looked at the things on top of the dresser. He picked up the watch.
‘He never wore it after he came home,’ she said.
Kelson glanced around the almost bare room. He looked at Emma Almonte’s lips. ‘He was proud,’ he said.
She had a sad smile. ‘Very.’
‘And hurt.’
‘Bad.’
Rodman spoke, his voice a low purr. ‘Who came to see him in the days before he left?’
‘Victor had no friends,’ his sister said. ‘When he first got back, a couple guys he served with would check on him. They would call. Then they stopped calling, and he sat in his room alone.’
‘Why would he go to Rogers Park?’ Rodman asked.
‘He wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘He liked to be alone. He liked to stay home. Mostly he locked himself in his room.’
‘He had electrical wire and a transmitter in his backpack,’ Kelson said. ‘Did he like to play with—’
‘You aren’t listening.’ Her dark eyes showed heat. ‘Victor didn’t own a backpack like that. I never saw it, and I would’ve seen it. Do you know how he came home from Afghanistan? He and his best friend were taking the detonator out of an IED in Jalalabad. Victor went back to the truck, and the IED exploded. Victor had trouble after that. The army gave him a discharge and sent him back to me. He used to have friends. He used to be funny and smart. Do you really think he’d play with wire and radio transmitters? Do you think he’d even touch them?’
‘Then why’d he burn your sofa?’
Again her cheeks colored. ‘I don’t know. He said it was an accident. The fire department inspector said it was arson. It was a small fire – it wrecked the cushions. Victor called nine-one-one himself. He threw the cushions out on the front walk before the firetrucks even came.’
‘Cry for help?’ Rodman said.
‘I don’t know what he was thinking,’ she said.
Kelson and Rodman thanked her for talking with them, and Rodman gave her his phone number and said, ‘If you think of anything.’
Kelson gave her his card and looked at her lips. ‘If you need to talk.’
But as they moved toward the front door, voices from outside the house stopped them. Then a fist pounded on the front door. A moment later, another fist pounded in the back. A megaphone told Emma Almonte to open her door.
Kelson went to the front window and looked.
A joint team of FBI agents and Chicago Police officers had parked cars and special operations trucks up and down the street as far as Kelson could see. Men and women dressed in assault gear crouched low behind the vehicles. They’d fastened a black metal cable to the front-door burglar bars on one end and the front of a tactical truck on the other. The rose-embroidered ribbon, torn from the door, lay on the lawn.
‘I guess you’d better,’ Kelson told Emma Almonte.
She opened the door. Six men on the sidewalk below the front step pointed assault rifles at her. One of them lowered his rifle and said – politely – ‘Ma’am, we have a warrant to search your house.’
FOURTEEN
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Venus Johnson asked Kelson on the street in front of the house. Kelson, Rodman, and Emma Almonte stood facing a black FBI truck, their hands cuffed behind their backs. FBI agents and CPD officers poured in and out of the house.
‘You think it’s Victor Almonte,’ Kelson said. ‘It isn’t.’
Rodman told Emma Almonte, ‘Get a lawyer. The cops’ll hear what they want. They’ll twist it. I’ve been there.’
Her eyes were steely. ‘I have nothing to hide.’
Venus Johnson faced Kelson. ‘What fucked-up logic convinced you that coming here made sense? You used to be a cop – Malinowski says a pretty good one. You know better than to step into shit this deep.’
Kelson looked at her. ‘How did Victor Almonte even end up at the Rogers Park Library?’
‘Took the damned El, I’m guessing.’
Rodman said to Emma Almonte, ‘Get a lawyer. The cops break everything. They break whole families.’
Kelson turned from Venus Johnson. ‘They broke DeMarcus’s. He used to have a brother.’
‘My family’s already broken,’ Emma Almonte said.
Venus Johnson put a hand on the back of Kelson’s neck. ‘I’m talking to you.’
Rodman glared at her. ‘You don’t want to do that.’ His voice was gentle. Nothing else about him was.
She took her hand off. ‘If you screwed up this investigation, I swear to God I’ll—’
‘None of that either,’ Rodman said.
Emma Almonte smiled at Rodman and said to Johnson, ‘I don’t know him, but getting him mad seems like a bad idea.’
Kelson said to her, ‘I like you.’
Venus Johnson eyed each of them, one after the other. ‘Goddammit,’ she said – then she turned to another cop and, gestur
ing at them, said, ‘Separate cars. Downtown.’
FBI Special Agent Cynthia Poole visited Kelson in the interview room at the Harrison Street Police Station. She wore a charcoal-gray pantsuit with a white blouse and had tied her brown hair in a neat ponytail. She wore thick-framed glasses.
‘Christ, what a cliché,’ Kelson said. His hands were chained to a metal loop on a metal table.
‘Excuse me?’ She sat down across from him.
‘Let me guess. Your dad was a cop. You grew up idolizing him, but he said no daughter of his would go into law enforcement. So you one-upped him by going FBI. You played sports in high school. Softball? Volleyball? In college, you studied criminal justice and minored in something useful – Spanish – no, chemistry, since they put you on a bomb investigation. You met your boyfriend at Quantico. Or your girlfriend. Girlfriend, right?’
‘Has anyone told you to shut the fuck up?’
‘Happens all the time. See, I took a bullet in my head, and I can’t help—’
‘I read your file,’ she said.
‘Then don’t be too hard on me.’
‘Don’t make excuses for being an asshole,’ she said. ‘Why were you at Victor Almonte’s house?’
‘Emma Almonte’s house,’ Kelson said, ‘where Victor was living. Same reason as you. Since leaving the department—’
‘Getting fired,’ she said.
He stared at her, speechless for a moment.
‘Keep your facts straight,’ she said.
‘Since getting kicked out on disability,’ he said, ‘I’ve worked as a private investigator. One of my friends asked me to look into this after his nephew—’
‘The nephew being James “Neto” LeCoeur,’ she said.
‘That’s the one. I told Venus Johnson about him. He’s—’
‘A juvie hacker who grew up into an adult screwball – unemployed for the past eight months after a series of short-term programming jobs which left almost all of the clients unsatisfied and some of their companies in disarray.’
‘That’s more than I knew.’
‘Civil lawsuit pending from Vanguard Machines, where Neto rearranged the accounts payable system – without permission or authorization.’
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