‘The way we live.’
‘Nothing about the way you live looks worth sacrificing much to save.’
‘I’ve made sacrifices too.’ Her eyes looked as incapable of tears as Marty LeCoeur’s. But they showed pain. ‘Sacrifices you can’t imagine.’
Kelson stared at her, then lowered himself into the chair again. ‘I don’t want to hear about your sacrifices. I swear, if you tell me about a pony you gave up when you were a poor little rich girl because your daddy made a bad investment, I’ll punch myself in the face.’
‘Will you at least keep looking for the thumb drive?’ Sylvia Crane asked. ‘And will you tell me if you find it? Before you give it to Genevieve Bower?’
‘What good would that do?’
‘I can prepare myself – and those around me.’
‘All these secrets. Most of the time I wish I could keep them, but sometimes I’m just pissed off at people like you who’ve got them.’
Regret edged at her voice. ‘I seem to piss off a lot of people.’
‘I’m with you there,’ he said. ‘What’re you going to do about the money Neto sent to parts unknown?’
For a moment, she seemed distracted. ‘You don’t need to worry about it.’
‘You’re holding Marty accountable for Neto. Maybe you’ll hold Marty’s friends accountable too. I like to know who thinks I owe them.’
‘We’ll get the money back,’ she said, almost apologetically. ‘Every dollar. Every penny. We have to, you see? Our reputation depends on it. We’ll decide who shares blame, and we’ll do what we need to do. In the meantime, my father will make the company a personal loan.’
‘Beaky?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘He can spare thirty-seven million?’
‘Maybe.’ She seemed to consider Kelson. ‘Like you, he has an unusual sense of the world. Before I leave, I want you to meet him.’
‘What do you mean? Where is he?’
‘Downstairs in the car with our driver – he likes to stay close to me. It’ll take only a minute.’
‘I told you to come alone.’
‘That’s not quite what you said. And are you really worried about a little sixty-eight-year-old man?’ She took out her phone, straightened her face as if the phone could see, and touched the keys. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m with Mr Kelson. Will you come up?’ She listened to the response, then hung up with a tired smile.
‘Why do you want me to meet him?’ Kelson said.
‘So you can see what I’m dealing with.’
‘Why would I want to?’
‘Oh, everyone should meet my father at least once.’
A minute later, the short man with the beakish nose and intense blue eyes knocked. He wore gray slacks, a yellow dress shirt, and red suspenders.
When Kelson let him into the office, the man moved as close as a boxer looking to clench. Kelson stepped back, bumping against his desk.
Sylvia Crane used more of that tired smile. ‘Sam Kelson, this is my father, Harold Crane. Daddy, this is Sam Kelson – he’s still considering whether to help us.’
Harold Crane reached a well-manicured hand to shake. It seemed big for the body that supported it.
When Kelson gripped it, the man’s fingers were flaccid.
Seeming to take pleasure from Kelson’s expression, the man shot a glance at his daughter.
She eyed him the way you do a child who likes to knock down bottles at the grocery store. ‘Mr Kelson speaks his mind.’
‘Always,’ Kelson said.
‘Seems like a dangerous habit,’ Harold Crane said. He dropped into one of Kelson’s client chairs. ‘I’m glad you’re thinking of helping. My daughter’s used to getting her way.’
‘I haven’t agreed to anything,’ Kelson said, ‘but I’m used to having tough women get their way with me.’
The man cackled. ‘Me too, me too. Sylvia’s mother was the toughest bitch I ever knew, God rest her soul. I have unconventional beliefs, and I behave in unconventional ways, Mr Kelson. If I said or did the same as everyone else, who would pay attention? They would go to Goldman Sachs. Our clients are looking for the unorthodox. If we don’t surprise them once or twice a year, they’ll find another firm that will – though it’s also true that as long as I keep the green river flowing, everyone’s happy. Do you know the green river, son? Have you been down it?’
‘Cash?’ Kelson said.
‘Smells better than lilacs,’ the man said.
‘That river can dry up,’ Sylvia Crane said, with the tired smile.
Her father pointed a finger at her and told Kelson, ‘She’s a tough bitch too. That’s why I love her – and why I keep her near.’ He got up, adjusted his suspenders, and seemed about to offer Kelson another handshake, but crammed his hands into his pockets. ‘Nice meeting you, Mr Kelson. I hope to see you again.’ He nodded toward his daughter and added, ‘If you date this one, watch out – she’s eaten up two husbands, she’s working on the third, and she shows no loss of appetite.’ He went to the office door, opened it, and stared back at his daughter. ‘Come, dear.’
Kelson looked at her. ‘Why don’t you lock him up?’
She smiled. ‘My father earns his clients over fifty million dollars a year. He gets a quarter of that. Don’t you wish you were so crazy?’ She followed her father to the door. ‘You’ll tell me if you find the thumb drive?’
Kelson felt something between pity and revulsion toward her. ‘I’ll think about it.’
TWENTY-THREE
Often lately, Kelson dreamed about the kittens. In one recurring dream, he and Sue Ellen entered Payday and Painter’s Lane in a cat show at McCormick Place Convention Center on the lakefront south of downtown. Other pet owners brought Siamese cats, Persians, weird long-backed Abyssinians, and mouse-faced Sphinx cats – fragile, haywire breeds. Kelson and Sue Ellen had the only mutts. Payday and Painter’s Lane won no ribbons, but Sue Ellen laughed and grilled Kelson with Stump Dad questions as the crowds walked past. In another dream, Payday and Painter’s Lane wandered into a mass of kittens – hundreds of them, thousands – and Kelson’s anxiety over losing them crumbled under his pleasure at all the kittenish fur and mewling.
But on the night after he talked with Sylvia Crane and her father, he dreamed that a sparrow had gotten inside his apartment. Payday and Painter’s Lane stalked the bird as it flitted from a lamp to the dining table and then batted its tiny wings against the window. When it landed on his bed, the kittens pounced and tore the sparrow apart. Kelson yelled, ‘No, no – don’t do that – don’t,’ as they ripped off the little legs and bit into the tender belly. Payday looked up at him, feathers hanging from her mouth, and, using Marty LeCoeur’s voice, said, ‘It’s what we fucking do.’
Kelson’s phone rang, knocking him halfway out of the dream. He grabbed at it, answering, ‘Thank God.’
‘What?’ It was Dan Peters.
‘They were killing the bird.’
‘Spit out the Percocet, Kelson,’ the detective said. ‘Meet me at the Canal Street Marina.’
Kelson shook free of the dream. ‘What’s going on? Since when do you call me?’
‘Since we found your friend Jeremy Oliver – what’s left of him.’
The Canal Street Marina was a triangular boatyard nested between the rusting base of the Canal Street lifting bridge, the South Branch of the Chicago River, and four lines of railroad tracks. By late May, most of the people who dry-docked their boats through the winter and spring had brought them upriver to the harbors, readying them for the first warm days of June. A chain-link fence topped with coils of barbed wire surrounded the remaining dry-docked boats.
Kelson parked outside the marina at three in the morning. He told a uniformed cop that Dan Peters had asked him to come, and the cop let him through the gate, pointing him across a concrete lot to a forty-foot sailboat on a wooden cradle. Crime tape looped around the boat, and inside the taped ring, Dan Peters, a couple of forensics detectives, and a few oth
er cops Kelson didn’t know worked in the hot white glow of pole-mounted floodlights. Outside the crime tape, a man in an untucked flannel shirt and filthy jeans sat on a plastic crate staring at the ground while a cop with a clipboard asked him questions.
Kelson cut wide around the interview and went to Peters, who nodded back at the man in flannel and said, ‘His name’s Demetrius – one of the drunks who live in the neighborhood. Around midnight he decided he wanted some of the yachting life, or at least a vinyl cushion to help him sleep off a bottle of Bacardi. He squeezed through a hole by the street gate, said eeny meeny, and climbed aboard. He found more than he was looking for.’
‘Why do you want me here?’ Kelson said.
‘First, you can identify Jeremy Oliver. Second, you can tell me everything you know about him and how he took up dryland sailing in the afterlife.’ He said to another cop, ‘Give him a look.’
The cop stood on a wheeled metal platform that the marina used when servicing boats.
Kelson climbed a ladder and looked into the open cockpit.
The decaying remains of Jeremy Oliver, his legs tucked up to his chest like a sleeping baby’s, lay on a brown plastic sheet. All the parts of him seemed to be there, though one hand looked as chewed up as the sparrow in Kelson’s dream.
‘Tell me,’ Kelson said.
‘Five lawn bags, one inside the other,’ the cop said, gesturing at the brown plastic. ‘Forensics cut them away, all but a hole that rats already chewed through.’ He motioned at Oliver’s hand and said, ‘I hate rats. The drunk climbed up, looking for a place to put his tired head, but he smelled something bad. The bags must’ve kept the stink down for a while, but you can’t keep rats from dinner. They chewed the hole and started on the fingers. So the drunk skedaddled down and flagged a cruiser, and now here we are.’
‘Peters woke me out of a bad dream,’ Kelson said. ‘I liked the bad dream better.’ He climbed down the ladder and went back to Peters. ‘Yeah, it’s him. Can I go home?’
‘You can tell me everything you know,’ Peters said.
‘Who owns the boat?’ Kelson asked.
‘You know how much I like it when you do that? I ask you a question, and you act like I offered to give you a secret password. What do you know about Oliver?’
‘Last week, I went to Big Pie Pizza on North Avenue to meet a client named Genevieve Bower. My friend Marty – who’s more DeMarcus Rodman’s friend than mine – gave her my name. She said she’s missing her shoes. I got arrested after that, but it turns out she’s missing more than—’
‘Just Oliver,’ Peters said. ‘The short version.’
‘Which do you want – everything or the short version?’
‘Give me everything, but make it short.’
‘All right. Jeremy Oliver, aka JollyOllie. Thirty-four years old, white. Grew up in Oak Park. Worked as a DJ, spinning Eighties hits. Lived on North Hermitage. Had a Chevy Express cargo van – burned.’
‘I know all this,’ Peters said.
‘I think you’re unsure what you want,’ Kelson said.
‘What did you find out when you dug into him?’
‘How do you know I dug?’
‘As much as I think you’re an idiot, I think you’re a persistent one.’
‘Huh,’ Kelson said. ‘Along with Genevieve Bower’s shoes, Oliver stole a thumb drive. It’s supposed to have videos on it.’
‘Of what?’
‘I haven’t seen them. I think there’s some sex involving Genevieve Bower. I’ve asked around. The people who know are slow with specifics, and most people don’t know. Oliver played rotten music and had a worse personality. No one liked him, except Genevieve Bower, who dated him for nine days – until he ripped her off, so then she didn’t like him either.’
‘Would she have killed him?’ Peters asked.
‘She couldn’t even find him. She has ideas about cutting off the balls of guys she’s mad at, but I think she’s just looking for love.’ He added, ‘Like the rest of us.’
Peters stared at him, waiting for more.
Kelson said, ‘So she comes into my office with a black eye and bruised face, and I get the feeling she took the beating because of the thumb drive and whatever happened to Oliver. I ask, but she won’t say much. Now she’s hiding at a motel.’
‘Can you get in touch with her?’
‘I can try.’ Kelson took out his phone and dialed her number.
As had happened before, her line rang and rang and bounced to voicemail.
He talked to the recorder. ‘I need to talk to you. The police need to talk to you. Everybody needs to talk to you. Call me.’ He hung up. ‘Nope,’ he told Peters. ‘Also, Oliver rented his attic from the husband of a woman whose family runs a private equity firm called G&G.’
‘What am I supposed to do with that?’
‘Anything you want. You asked for details – I’m giving them to you. Want the rest?’
Peters considered what Kelson had told him and seemed to decide that if he asked anything more he’d get a lecture on kittens. ‘It’s always bad at three a.m.,’ he said.
‘It’s never good when you’re dead,’ Kelson said.
‘I suppose. Go home and sleep.’
‘Did I give you anything that couldn’t’ve waited for morning?’
‘I guess not,’ Peters said. ‘But I’ve got to ask.’
‘And if you do, I’ve got to tell.’ Kelson walked toward the gate.
Peters called after him. ‘We already left a message for the boatyard manager. To find out who owns the sailboat.’
Kelson nodded and kept walking. Then he called back to him. ‘Let me know if it’s Harold or Sylvia Crane – or Chip Voudreaux.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Kelson drove to the Golden Apple Grill, a twenty-four-hour diner where he landed on especially bad nights – and especially good ones – and ordered a waffle with a side of sausage and a side of bacon. ‘Put the bacon in a bag, please,’ he said to his regular waitress.
‘For the kittens?’
‘Can’t have them eating sparrows,’ he said.
She was used to him, mostly, and tried to humor him, awkwardly. ‘Save the birds – that’s my motto.’
‘Or the hand of a dead man.’
‘Keep it to yourself.’ She had limits.
He read the news on his phone while waiting for his food.
The Tribune had a profile of Victor Almonte and biographical sketches of Amy Runeski and Neto.
Almonte’s profile included pictures of a smiling four-year-old boy, a high school kid with his soccer team, and a man in a soldier’s uniform. Under a headline that asked WHAT WENT WRONG? two unnamed demolition technicians who served with him said no one could be a better, more loyal, or more reliable friend. Never in a million years, they said. Always had our backs. Something must’ve gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Kelson exited the article and dialed his lawyer Ed Davies. He left a voicemail – ‘Did you find Emma Almonte? Did you spring her? I need to talk with her.’
Then he opened the Tribune site again and read about victim number one, Amy Runeski – her upbringing in Kenosha, Wisconsin, her dancing at the Kenosha Academy of Dance, Music & Drama, and her first date with Tom Runeski at the Pub ’n’ Grub.
The sketch of James ‘Neto’ LeCoeur called Neto ‘precocious’, ‘fun loving’, and, according to his seventh-grade math teacher, ‘a young man with a bright future’. Neto’s father, who’d refused to come to the hospital when Marty called, said Neto was ‘quite a boy’.
‘Which could cut either way,’ Kelson said.
The waitress, delivering his food, said, ‘What could?’
‘Fathers and sons,’ Kelson said.
‘Mothers and daughters too,’ she said. ‘Mine kicked me out when I was seventeen. I never understood until I had one of my own.’
‘Sad,’ Kelson said.
‘Just the way it is.’ She put a sticky-bottomed bottle of syrup on the table. ‘It’s
what we do.’
‘I’ve heard that before,’ he said.
‘Sure, it’s common wisdom.’
When she left, he cut a bite of sausage, opened the Sun-Times site on his phone, and forked the sausage into his mouth.
Then his phone rang.
Caller ID said Ed Davies.
When Kelson chewed a hello, Davies said, ‘Why the hell are you calling me at four thirty in the morning?’
‘If it’s too early, why the hell are you calling me back?’ Kelson said, and hung up. He realized his mistake and dialed.
‘What?’ Davies said.
‘Did you bust Emma Almonte out?’
‘Don’t call in the middle of the night unless you have an emergency,’ Davies said, and he hung up.
Kelson stared at his phone as if it might change its mind, then said, ‘Crank,’ and ate his waffle.
At seven thirty, after returning to his apartment for a shower, he drove to his office. He checked his guns, winked at the pictures of Sue Ellen and the kittens, sat at his desk, and called Genevieve Bower. Again, her line went to voicemail. ‘Now you’re worrying me,’ he said.
He dialed Dan Peters, who answered after the first ring.
‘Genevieve Bower’s missing,’ Kelson said.
‘And I haven’t slept – and I’m up to my ass in paperwork – and the coffee in the department sucks,’ Peters said, and then, sounding as if he was trying to care, ‘in what sense missing?’
‘The only sense. I tried calling a bunch of times. No answer.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you. I sympathize.’
‘Last time someone went missing, he turned up in garbage bags in a boatyard. Last time I saw Genevieve Bower, she had bruises and a black eye.’
‘Right.’ Peters sighed into the phone. ‘If this is a waste of time – even a second of it …’ He let Kelson imagine the rest.
So Kelson spent twenty minutes re-describing Genevieve Bower, the conversations they’d had at Big Pie Pizza and in his office, and her plans to hole up in a motel. ‘You could get some beat cops to look at places with cocktail lounges,’ Kelson said. ‘She’s the type who’d want a lounge.’
‘What type is that?’
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