Lucky Bones

by Michael Wiley

Kelson swept his pistol across the room, and the men froze. He backed toward the hallway. ‘I got what I came for,’ he said.

  Susan Centlivre glanced at the two men. Neither moved. ‘What was that?’ she asked Kelson.

  ‘I wondered what kind of person would send thugs after a woman who reached out for help.’

  ‘I told you, you have that wrong,’ she said. ‘I want to help her. I’m the only one who does.’

  Kelson said, ‘You wear your hippie costume, and you do your English runaway act, but you talk like the rest of your family. You’re as rotten as they are.’ He turned and jogged up the hall and out of the house.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Kelson drove downtown toward his office. He eyed the rearview mirror and saw only a parade of drivers minding their business – bored, talking on their phones, tapping their steering wheels to radio music. He gazed up through the windshield at the May sky, where clouds scudded on a stiff spring wind. ‘Family is everything,’ he said. He eyed the mirror again, then shifted lanes, cutting close to a silver SUV, which honked at him. ‘Or is that health?’

  By the time he pulled into the parking garage, his mind – and his monologue – had wandered from the Cranes to Sue Ellen and back. He walked out to the sidewalk, just missing the garage attendant, who scurried away when he saw him coming, went into Ricky’s Red Hots, and ordered a hotdog and fries, then carried his lunch into his building.

  When the elevator reached his floor, the computer training company classes were in session and the corridor was empty. He put his key in his door, but the lock tumbler had already turned. ‘This happens too often,’ he said. He set his bag of food on the floor, pulled his KelTec from his belt, and eased the door open.

  Stevie Phillips sat in Kelson’s chair behind the desk. Greg Cushman sat in one of the client chairs. They looked pleased with themselves.

  Kelson used a foot to nudge his bag inside, stepped in after it, and closed the door. He pointed his pistol at Cushman’s chest and said, ‘Pipsqueak,’ then at Phillips’s head, ‘Stretch,’ and then back at Cushman.

  Cushman smiled up at him. ‘See, we don’t need to knock down doors – in motel rooms or offices. Stevie’s good with a pick.’

  Phillips said, ‘My daddy taught me.’

  Cushman said, ‘In the time it takes you to order a hotdog, Stevie’s inside and reading your mail.’

  ‘I’m that good,’ Phillips said.

  Cushman said, ‘It’s why the Cranes hired him.’

  Kelson asked him, ‘Why’d they hire you?’

  ‘I’ve got a pleasant smile?’

  ‘Tell that pleasant smile to pick your ass up off my chair and carry you out of here,’ Kelson said.

  Phillips also tried a smile. ‘We could work together.’

  Cushman said, ‘We have a shared interest.’

  ‘What would that be?’ Kelson said.

  ‘Your continued well-being,’ Cushman said. ‘The Cranes could knock you down. They could make you go away. But you’re an ex-cop, right? You’ve been in the paper and on the news. The Cranes like to keep things quiet, but if you don’t cooperate, they’re willing to make noise.’

  Phillips said, ‘We’ve got nothing against you. Why should you get hurt?’

  Kelson laughed at that. ‘You guys are a kick. Breaking into my office. Talking like movie toughs. But here we are. Me with a gun. And you – well, you looking like a couple of jagoffs who don’t know better than to talk tough to a man pointing a gun at you.’

  Phillips reached into his lap and drew Kelson’s Springfield pistol up so it pointed at him. ‘Yeah, here we are.’

  Kelson said, ‘What good is a locked door if everyone just walks through it? Why stash a gun if everyone just grabs it?’

  ‘Life’s mysteries,’ Cushman said.

  ‘What’s your deal?’ Kelson said. ‘Do you do regular security for the Cranes? Or do they hire you special to twist arms and do break-ins?’

  ‘Here’s the thing,’ Cushman said. ‘The Cranes are smart. Smarter than anyone you ever met. Stevie and me, we’re dumb next to them, but we’re still smarter than you because some of it rubs off. So I’ll say this again. No one needs to get hurt. We can do this together. Like friends. You put away your gun. Stevie puts away your other gun. Maybe you offer us some french fries – maybe not. But we work this out together.’

  Kelson stepped toward him, aiming his pistol at the short man’s chest. ‘A couple years ago, I got shot in the head. Brain damage – too much for the cops to keep me on the force. I function fine now. I work. I eat. I get from one day to the next. But I have problems with impulse control. My therapist says I’m getting better, but sometimes it seems I’m getting worse. I say a lot that I shouldn’t. And sometimes’ – he stood close to Cushman now – ‘I do things. I take unnecessary risks. I show bad judgment.’

  Cushman smiled up at him, but said to his partner, ‘Put down the gun, Stevie.’

  Phillips laid the Springfield on Kelson’s desk – in reach, but out of his hand.

  ‘A gesture of good will,’ Cushman said.

  ‘Thank you. Now get the hell out of my office,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Not till we talk,’ Cushman said.

  ‘We just talked – at Susan Centlivre’s house.’

  ‘She talked. You talked. We listened.’

  Phillips said, ‘Our words matter more than hers.’ He touched the Springfield barrel, spinning the pistol on the desktop. When it stopped, the barrel pointed at Kelson. ‘Or yours.’

  Kelson said, ‘Is that because when you talk, your words are Harold and Sylvia Crane’s?’

  ‘Yeah, you’re quick,’ Phillips said. ‘You lying about the brain damage?’

  ‘I always tell the truth,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Susan Centlivre is a nice lady,’ Cushman said. ‘Sylvia isn’t. And Mr Crane? You don’t even want to know.’

  ‘We’ve got ideas about him,’ Phillips said.

  ‘Mr Kelson doesn’t want to hear our ideas,’ Cushman said.

  ‘Sure I do,’ Kelson said.

  Cushman smiled at him. ‘I can tell you’re quite the conversationalist. Well, d’you want to be loved or feared?’

  ‘Loved by family and friends,’ Kelson said, as if the question was a riddle. ‘Feared by enemies – and you.’

  ‘Exactly. But with Mr Crane it’s all fear, and always has been.’ Cushman’s smile widened.

  Phillips told Kelson, ‘Our job is to give that fear to you. Quietly if we can. Keeping you out of the news if possible.’

  ‘Got it,’ Kelson said. ‘Did you beat up Genevieve Bower? Did you give her the black eye?’

  ‘Let’s say we did,’ Cushman said. ‘Let’s say Susan’s story about the bar fight’s a lie we told her because she’s a nice lady. If you think about what we could do, a little beating doesn’t seem so bad. It might be a gentle message.’

  ‘Did you go to her motel room last night to hurt her?’ Kelson asked.

  ‘Let’s say we did that too.’ Cushman smiled. ‘Let’s say she ignored the gentle message. Let’s say the beating didn’t make a deep enough impression. Does that help you understand why we’re here?’

  ‘It does, thanks,’ Kelson said. Then he turned the KelTec in his hand and smacked the pistol grip into Cushman’s cheek. The metal cracked against bone, and a bright line of blood rose from the split skin. The silence that came from his mouth was like the silence of a baby who, suddenly injured, revs up to scream.

  Phillips snatched the Springfield off the desk and aimed at Kelson. Kelson turned the KelTec and aimed at him.

  Cushman’s voice squeaked. ‘You cocksucker.’ Blood streaked his face.

  ‘We came to talk,’ Phillips said. ‘To ask for your cooperation. Why’d you need to turn it into this?’

  ‘Impulse control,’ Kelson said. ‘Anger management. I don’t like anyone bragging about beating up people who can’t defend themselves.’

  ‘Now we’ve got a problem.’ Phillips had his finge
r on the trigger.

  ‘What was it before?’

  ‘It was an opportunity, maybe. You could’ve made money. Mr Crane needs men like you. But now you went and did this to Greg, who never did anything but smile at you with his winning smile.’

  ‘Everyone keeps offering me money. I like money. I wish I could take it.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s too bad.’

  ‘So what happens now? You shoot me, and I shoot you, and Pipsqueak crawls back to Harold Crane?’

  Phillips stared at him, then eased his finger from the trigger and set the gun on the desk. ‘No, now you take us to Genevieve Bower. Mr Crane has bigger guns than these. He’ll have us come after you on his own schedule if and when he’s ready for that kind of fight. You can think about that. And think about this – Mr Crane is fine hurting innocent bystanders. To tell the truth, I think he likes it. Hurting them makes a point. So when you’re with the people you want to love you – your friends, your family …’ He gestured at the picture of Sue Ellen on the wall. ‘Is that your kid?’

  Kelson flipped his pistol in his hand again and smacked the grip against the other side of Cushman’s face.

  Cushman screeched. Phillips snatched the gun from the desk and said, ‘What the hell was that one for?’

  ‘Never threaten my family. If Sue Ellen ever—’

  Phillips shook his head in disbelief. ‘Her name’s Sue Ellen?’

  Kelson threatened to hit Cushman again.

  Cushman cowered and yelled at Phillips, ‘Shoot him.’

  Kelson swung around and aimed at Phillips, and they were back where they started.

  Phillips said, ‘You’re a fucking idiot.’

  Kelson said, ‘Heard it before.’

  Then a hand knocked on the outside of the office door.

  ‘Disturbed the neighbors,’ Kelson said.

  Phillips aimed at Kelson’s chest. ‘Ignore it.’

  The hand knocked again.

  Phillips said, ‘Shh.’

  A voice spoke through the door. ‘Kelson? It’s Dan Peters.’

  ‘Ah,’ Kelson said. ‘The cops.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘We’ve got two choices,’ Kelson said to Phillips. ‘Either we put away my guns and I open the door and try to pretend we were talking about a job that doesn’t involve beating up and killing people, or we shoot each other and Detective Peters arrests Pipsqueak for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I vote for option number one.’

  ‘You fucked up big,’ Phillips said, but he opened the bottom desk drawer and laid the Springfield inside.

  Kelson stuck his KelTec in his belt and said to Cushman, ‘Wipe your face.’

  The short man wiped his bloody cheek with his sleeve.

  ‘You made it worse,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Cushman said.

  ‘I try to help,’ Kelson said, and opened the door.

  Dan Peters stepped in and looked from man to man.

  Kelson turned to Phillips. ‘Thanks for coming in,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we’ll be in touch – whether or not I want to be.’ Then he offered to shake Cushman’s hand, saying, ‘You really do have a winning smile.’ Cushman glared at him and followed Phillips into the corridor.

  Peters closed the door. ‘What was that about?’

  Kelson had prepared for the question. ‘They wanted me to do a job.’

  ‘Why was one of them bleeding?’

  Kelson could prepare only so much. ‘I hit him.’

  ‘Yeah? Why?’

  ‘He bragged about hurting people who can’t defend themselves.’

  Peters eyed him funny. ‘Great customer relations. I see why they’re lining up at your door.’

  ‘Funny thing is everyone wants to hire me lately.’ Kelson went to his desk. ‘What’s going on?’

  Peters seemed to shake off the image of the bloody-cheeked man. ‘We traced the boat where we found Jeremy Oliver. A man named Jim Fitzpatrick owns it.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Fifty-year-old broker. Lives in Bannockburn. Money. Fits the profile of a rich doofus who’s got nothing to do with a murder. Just a schmuck whose boat had the bad luck of getting a body dumped in it.’

  ‘Except?’

  ‘Except a name comes up that you mentioned as you walked away last night. Turns out the broker’s got a background at the Mercantile Exchange, but for the past five years he’s worked for a company no one seems to know much about, called G&G Private Equity, which is owned by a man named Harold Crane. A friend of yours?’

  ‘I met him for the first time yesterday.’

  ‘Tell it,’ Peters said.

  ‘All of it?’ Kelson felt his resistance crumbling.

  ‘Every detail.’

  ‘You know better than to do that,’ Kelson said. Then he told it. He talked for more than an hour. He told him about Genevieve Bower’s stolen Jimmy Choos, melted in the back of Jeremy Oliver’s burned-out van, and about the thumb drive everyone wanted but no one would explain. When he detoured into Sue Ellen and Taquería Uptown, Peters guided him back. So Kelson told him about Oliver renting the attic apartment from Sylvia Crane’s husband Bruce McCall, about Sylvia being Harold Crane’s daughter, about Harold’s other daughter, Susan Centlivre, taking a year-long head-trip to England but then returning to the family fold more or less, and about the family relationship to Genevieve Bower. He started to tell him about Genevieve Bower dating Marty LeCoeur, which led to Neto, which led to – but Peters nudged him back to Jeremy Oliver. So he told him that the men who’d left the office when Peters arrived might have killed Oliver or know who did. He told him about meeting the men at Susan Centlivre’s house and finding them at his desk when he returned. He finished with a blow-by-blow account of their faceoff.

  Peters looked furious. ‘You didn’t think you should tell me about them before they got in the elevator?’

  ‘I have no evidence they killed Oliver, or even met him,’ Kelson said. ‘But it seems like something they would enjoy.’

  When Peters left, Kelson yanked open the desk drawer where Phillips had put the Springfield. He wiped the pistol grip and barrel, released the magazine, checked the rounds, and popped the magazine back in place. He put the gun back in the drawer. He took out his laptop and turned it on. Phillips and Cushman had spent only a few minutes in the office before Kelson came in, but he checked his work history to see if they’d opened any files. As far as he could tell, they hadn’t.

  Then he yelled at the walls. He swore at Phillips and Cushman. He swore at Susan Centlivre. He swore at the Cranes and Chip Voudreaux. He started to swear at Genevieve Bower – then stopped and swore at Phillips and Cushman again.

  Someone rapped on the door.

  He swore at the door.

  Someone rapped again.

  He went to the door and tugged it open.

  Steve from building security stood outside. ‘Is everything OK, Mr Kelson?’

  For a moment, words tangled in Kelson’s mouth. Then he said, ‘Have you been letting a woman named Genevieve Bower into my office?’

  Steve’s body looked like Genevieve Bower’s would if her breasts sank to her stomach. He blushed. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Don’t ever do that again,’ Kelson said, and slammed the door.

  He swore at the walls about Steve.

  Then he called DeMarcus Rodman and told him about Phillips, Cushman, Susan Centlivre, the Cranes, and Steve. He also told him about Genevieve Bower vomiting in his wastebasket. He told him about the thin office walls, which kept him from yelling without disturbing others on his floor.

  Rodman listened until Kelson spent himself, then said in his gentle voice, ‘Maybe you’re yelling at yourself. Maybe you’re upset because you let this get away from you.’

  ‘You think you’re smart, don’t you?’ Kelson said.

  ‘Yeah, I do.’ Gentle. Smooth. ‘Good-looking too.’

  Kelson breathed hard. ‘Thanks for listening, though. What’s happening outside my
own echoing head?’

  ‘Marty’s arranging Neto’s cremation for as soon as the cops release the remains. Meantime, Venus Johnson pulled him into the station for a couple hours this morning. When the cops picked him up, Janet freaked out and called me. So I called Ed Davies, and he went down and threatened them with his legal magic. Anyway, he busted Marty out. Marty says Venus Johnson grilled him about Neto – if Neto knew explosives the way he knew computers, any reason he’d blow up a library, any reason he’d hang out in Rogers Park?’

  ‘I thought the cops settled on Victor Almonte,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Seemed like it, didn’t it? But Marty says Johnson hit him hard, left and right. She knew about Neto hacking the Argentinian bank when he was a teenager and about some other stuff the kid did that Marty’d never heard about. But you know Marty. Johnson must’ve thought she could roll over him. He says he insulted and picked at her until she got mean. When Davies came to the station, she chucked Marty at him – probably glad to get rid of him before she did something that got her in trouble.’

  ‘What else?’ Kelson said.

  ‘Davies says he sprang Emma Almonte late last night. The FBI had her. I’m going to drive out by her house and check on her this afternoon. What about you?’

  ‘Doreen took Genevieve Bower to my apartment. As soon as she sleeps off her drunk, I’m going to do a Venus Johnson on her until she explains why the Cranes want her enough to send a goon squad after her.’

  Rodman asked, ‘You think Phillips and Cushman would go to your apartment too?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Kelson said, though as soon as he said it he felt the possibility. When they were at Susan Centlivre’s house he’d even told them Genevieve Bower was in his bed, though no one had seemed to take him seriously.

  ‘Careful with these guys,’ Rodman said. ‘They sound smarter than they act.’

  ‘I never said they act stupid,’ Kelson said.

  He hung up with Rodman and dialed Doreen.

  When she picked up, she said, ‘Hey baby, you need to start hanging out with a better class of friends.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘You said she’d finished throwing up. You underestimated her.’