Rodman brought her a cup of coffee. She took it from him without seeming to see him.
She said, ‘The thumb drive that Jeremy Oliver stole had a copy of one of the videos.’
She raised the cup to her face. But instead of drinking, she stared into the brown liquid as if searching for her reflection.
Kelson said, ‘You were blackmailing your uncle?’
‘Trying to,’ she said. ‘Trying my damned best.’
He said the obvious. ‘He wants the thumb drive.’
‘They all do,’ she said. ‘Family business. If he goes down, they all go down.’
Kelson thought about what she’d told him. ‘What was the thing with Jeremy Oliver and the shoes?’
‘Sylvia set me up,’ she said. ‘She knew I’d go to Susan’s party. She lined up Jeremy to DJ the party and then to come on to me. Susan knew I was selling counterfeits. I guess Sylvia promised him the crate of shoes to do what he wanted with if he also stole the thumb drive. I guess she didn’t tell him what was on the drive. But he looked. If you got back the shoes, I planned to pay you to get the thumb drive. I didn’t trust you to try until you showed what you could do. I was afraid. I fell for the whole thing. I’m stupid.’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
A tear rolled down her cheek.
‘I mean, we all are,’ he said. ‘We’re people. That makes us stupid. All of us.’
‘Not Uncle Harry.’
Rodman said, ‘Tell the rest of it.’
She held the cup to her lips and drank. For a moment, she looked as if the coffee might come back up.
‘Tell it,’ Rodman said.
‘I’m pretty sure no one was supposed to find Jeremy after they killed him,’ she said. ‘When you went into his apartment and saw his body, he was supposed to be gone. They must’ve been coming back later to get rid of him. That homeless man shouldn’t have found his body in the boatyard either. If he’d come a couple hours later, someone would’ve sunk Jeremy in the river or taken him out to the lake and sunk him there.’
‘How do you know this?’ Kelson asked.
She sipped the coffee and seemed to find it bitter. ‘When people screw up – even when they don’t – they disappear. It’s how the Cranes handle problems. When Sylvia was fifteen, she had a crush on a kid who helped his dad clean Harry’s pool in the summer. The kid was tall and good-looking and Mexican. A teenage crush. Harry saw them together – and so the kid vanished. The kid’s dad kept cleaning the pool, and a week or two later, he started driving a new truck. Sylvia asked him where his son was, and he said he sent him to Durango to live with his grandmother. Sylvia didn’t believe it. Harry sees threats everywhere. Some are real. Some not so much. He’ll tell you that his ability to see them – especially when no one else does – has made him rich. He makes those threats go away.’
She filled her mouth with coffee and forced herself to swallow.
Kelson said, ‘It’s happened more than once?’
‘When G&G distributes funds to its clients,’ she said, ‘Harry always gets someone new to make the distribution. Someone unnecessary to the company.’
‘Which is why he talked to Marty and then hired Neto,’ Kelson said.
‘Someone disposable,’ she said. ‘Someone who can vanish – because they do. They all vanish. Some retire or move away – at least Harry says they do. I’m pretty sure the less lucky ones never even pack up their offices – never make it out of the city.’
Kelson stared at Genevieve Bower. ‘That’s what happened to Neto at the library? They made him vanish?’
‘I’m not saying,’ she said, ‘not necessarily.’
Rodman said, ‘You don’t need to say.’
Kelson asked, ‘Why did you give Marty’s name to the Cranes if you knew the danger?’
‘I didn’t,’ Genevieve Bower said. The coffee stayed down, and Rodman went back to the kitchen to make toast. She said, ‘I told Susan I went on a couple of dates with Marty. She must’ve told Sylvia or Harry about him. I wouldn’t’ve mentioned him to Susan if I’d thought she’d do that.’
‘Either way, it got Neto killed, if what you’re thinking is true,’ Kelson said.
‘What could I do?’ she said.
‘You could’ve told Marty to turn down the job.’
‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know.’ Another tear rolled down her cheek. She shook her head. ‘But I did bad things.’
‘With Harold Crane?’ Kelson said. ‘That doesn’t count. You were a kid. We’ve got to take this to—’
‘You’re not listening. I did—’
‘The prosecutor will bargain for the blackmail if you testify. They do it all the time. You can cut a deal.’
‘You aren’t listening.’
‘I’ll hook you up with my lawyer, Ed Davies. He knows how to do this. He’ll make you buy him a steak dinner after he clears you, but that’s a good thing – he’ll clear you, and then you eat steak.’
‘Harry got me pregnant.’
‘What?’
‘Pregnant. When I was fourteen.’
‘See?’ Kelson said, but he didn’t know what he saw or wanted her to see.
‘I ran away,’ she said. ‘I stayed at a friend’s house for a while until her dad tried to screw me too.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kelson said.
‘I stayed with another friend until I started to show and her mom kicked me out.’
‘You don’t need to tell me this,’ Kelson said.
‘You’re wrong. I need to tell it – so you understand. The night my friend’s mom kicked me out, I got on the El and rode around the city for hours and hours. I couldn’t go home. I wouldn’t call Harry. Around four in the morning, a couple of girls my age got on my train car – punked up in black and looking scary as hell. When we finished staring each other down, they told me they lived with some other kids in an empty house they’d broken into on Orchard Street. I moved in with them. We spent our days hanging out at a Dunkin’ Donuts and our nights riding around the city, sneaking into clubs, and holding parties at the house. Kids came and went. I stayed. I turned fifteen when I was seven months pregnant, and by that time I was like the mother of a family of runaways – some of them gay, some addicted, some just plain crazy, but all of us clinging to each other. The night I had my baby, one of the other kids freaked out and called an ambulance. Everything came down. They let me hold my baby afterward. But then they took her away, and a social worker came, and a woman from the police. I was a kid. I told them my name, and they called my mom and dad. I’d been gone a long time.’ She stared at Kelson, her eyes hard now, as if she’d never shed a tear. ‘But you know who came to the hospital instead?’
Kelson hated to say it, but he had to and did. ‘Harold.’
‘Uncle Harry. And you know what he brought me? Another amazing little present in an amazing little box. A gold necklace. He said his mom wore it when he was born. He treated me like I’d done nothing wrong – like he’d done nothing. I was confused. I was stupid. I was so tired and I hurt so much. He told me he’d take care of our baby. He said I could go home as if none of this had happened. I could be a girl again – if I let him take care of the baby. I don’t know what he promised the hospital. I don’t know how much he paid the cop and social worker. I gave my baby to him. He asked, and like every other time he asked, I gave. I don’t need to tell you what happened to her.’
Again, Kelson hated to say it. ‘She vanished?’
‘As if she never existed. I gave my baby to a man who makes people disappear. No one even finds the bones.’
‘No way I’ll talk to the cops,’ she said to Kelson an hour later. Her plate of toast remained on the couch next to her, untouched. ‘What would I tell them? Twenty years ago Uncle Harry molested me? I had his baby and I gave the baby to him knowing I’d never see her again – knowing exactly what he would do to her? And no, I don’t have any records, though the hospital probably got a big donation from Harry around that time,
or maybe a hospital administrator suddenly had a new Mercedes. If the cops could figure out who they assigned to handle this kind of thing back then, maybe I would recognize her, but I was high on pain meds and upset, so maybe not, and even if I could, she can say she doesn’t remember me, and who’re they going to believe? You don’t think I’ve thought about this? I’ve ripped myself up over it for twenty years.’
‘Tell the cops about Neto,’ Kelson said. ‘Tell them how Harold Crane makes people disappear. Tell them he’s behind the library blast.’
Her mouth twisted as if she would cry, but she laughed a bitter laugh. ‘They’d call me a liar.’
‘She’s right,’ Doreen said.
Rodman said, ‘They kick people in the ass who have more evidence than she has.’
‘What then?’ Kelson said.
‘We shade it in, man,’ Rodman said. ‘If we want them to see it, we’ve got to show it to them. Even if the picture’s clear, we can’t count on it.’
Kelson considered that. ‘Then what are we waiting for?’
So Rodman went into his bedroom and brought back his snub-nose Colt revolver. He gave it to Doreen. ‘Stay here and stay safe.’
She turned the gun in her hands and touched the cylinder.
‘If anyone you don’t know comes through the door, shoot,’ Kelson said.
THIRTY-ONE
Rodman and Kelson went out and drove to Emma Almonte’s house. By the time they pulled to the curb on Keeler Avenue, a mid-evening gloom hung over the neighborhood. The double security floodlight shined over the yard into the street from under the front gutter, and a porchlight shined on the front steps. Emma Almonte had taken in the American flag from under the floodlight and the rose-embroidered ribbon from between the front door and the burglar bars. Curtains covered the front window except at the edges, where warm yellow light showed.
Kelson and Rodman stepped on to the porch and rang the doorbell.
When no one answered, Rodman moved back into the yard, and Kelson rang again.
No one answered.
Kelson touched the handle on the burglar bars.
Locked.
He reached through the bars and tried the doorknob.
Locked.
He took out his phone and dialed Emma Almonte’s number.
It rang twice and she picked up, sounding frightened.
‘It’s Sam Kelson,’ he said. ‘I just rang your doorbell.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I need to talk with you about Victor.’
‘I’m done talking,’ she said.
‘I think I know how your brother died,’ he said. ‘I think I know who used him.’
She hung up. Then the front door opened, and she peered through the burglar bars into the yard and street. ‘Just the two of you?’
‘Just us,’ Kelson said.
She let them in, closing and locking the door behind them. The front room smelled clean but closed in, as if no one had opened a window or door in days or weeks. The new couch had a dent in it as if Emma Almonte had been sleeping there.
‘I don’t answer the door after dark anymore,’ she said. Last time Kelson saw her, he’d admired her wide olive-brown face and coral lipstick. He’d told her she had great lips. This evening she looked five years older and wore no lipstick.
‘What happened to your lips?’ he said.
Her expression told him there was something wrong with him, not her. ‘Nothing – why?’
‘You’ve had a hard run of it,’ he said.
‘The FBI locked me up and said I knew things I didn’t know.’
‘What kind of things?’ Kelson asked.
She shook her head. ‘You say you’ve learned how Victor died – how somebody used him.’
Kelson said, ‘Did he ever mention a man named Harold Crane or a company called G&G?’
She shook her head again. ‘Who are they?’
Before Kelson could explain, Rodman asked her, ‘Do you think you could write a list of people he still knew from the army after he got out? Especially anyone who lives in or around the city. Maybe they work private security.’
‘The FBI wanted names too,’ she said. ‘I didn’t tell them, the bastards.’
‘Are we bastards too?’ Kelson said.
She let her eyes rest on Rodman. ‘No, you’re OK. But it’s a short list.’ She went into the kitchen and came back with a notepad and pencil. She wrote four names, tore off the sheet, and gave it to Rodman.
Richard Gentian.
Ramsey Garner.
Debbie Turner.
Carlos Rivera.
‘Debbie Turner’s still in the service,’ she said. ‘He knew her in Jalalabad. They talked a lot after Victor’s friend died from the IED. I don’t know where she’s stationed now. The other three are out. Richard Gentian’s in Indiana with his family. He visited right after Victor came home, and they texted sometimes. I don’t know about the other two. When Victor first came back, he talked about getting together with Ramsey Garner, but I don’t think he ever did. He mentioned Carlos Rivera a bunch when Rivera was getting out of the army. I guess they served together and didn’t get along. I think he lives downstate.’
‘Did he ever talk about doing a favor for any of them?’ Rodman asked. ‘A job?’
‘Victor needed help from others. He seemed a long way from doing things for anybody else. Do you think a friend could have killed him?’
‘What did the FBI say?’ Rodman asked.
‘They shut up every time I asked a question. But from the questions they asked me, I got the feeling they thought Victor was everything from a psycho to a Taliban to some kind of Puerto Rican terrorist. I had to tell them, like, three times that we’re Dominican, and Dominicans and Puerto Ricans don’t even get along.’
Kelson asked, ‘Has anyone else talked to you about Victor – other than the FBI, the cops, and us?’
‘No, no one,’ she said. But she sounded frightened again.
Rodman did his heavy eyelid thing. ‘When we came in, you said you don’t answer the door after dark anymore.’
She hesitated. ‘I’m getting – calls.’
‘What kind?’
‘The kind you get when your brother blows up people. Hate calls. Threatening calls. Bastards telling me what they want to do to me. People telling me they’ll blow up my house. Screaming at me to go back where I came from – which is St Louis, by the way.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kelson said. ‘Anything else?’
‘You want more than that? Yeah, I get real weirdos – the ones that sympathize with Victor and say I’d better keep my mouth shut about him.’
‘Do they tell you what they’re worried you’ll say?’ Kelson said. ‘Any hints?’
‘Yeah, I need to honor the dead. I’d better respect the decisions Victor made. I tell them no one ever respected him more than me—’
The doorbell rang.
Kelson, Rodman, and Emma Almonte looked at each other.
It rang again.
Kelson gestured at the little front hall. ‘Want me to answer?’
But Emma Almonte went to the window and peeked outside. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, and she stepped into the hall and opened the door.
Whoever stood on the front porch spoke to her quietly, and she responded quietly. They talked for a minute that way. Then Kelson stepped toward the hall to listen, but Rodman shook his head and said, ‘Give her space.’
She talked with the visitor for another minute, then opened the burglar bars and went out to the front porch, pulling the door behind her.
Rodman sat down on the couch. Kelson stared at the white rug with its threadbare middle. He said, ‘How do you even wear it out that way?’ Three minutes passed. Four. Kelson no longer heard the muffled voices.
He went to the little hall.
‘Give her a minute,’ Rodman said.
Kelson kept going. He opened the door and stared through the burglar bars. Someone had broken the front porchlight
and double security floodlight. He stepped out to the dark porch.
Emma Almonte was gone.
THIRTY-TWO
Kelson and Rodman ran to Kelson’s car. They circled the block, then circled the surrounding blocks. They saw no one who looked like Emma Almonte, nothing that indicated where she’d gone.
They drove back to her house and searched it. When she’d gone to the kitchen for a pencil and paper, she’d left her phone on the counter. Kelson pocketed it. Rodman found her purse in her bedroom. Aside from a business card for Ed Davies’s law firm, another for FBI Special Agent David Jenkins, and a wallet-sized picture of her and Victor at an amusement park long, long ago, nothing connected her to the Rogers Park Library blast or the evil that seemed to emanate from G&G Private Equity. But Kelson said, ‘They made her vanish too.’
‘What does she know worth making her disappear?’ Rodman said.
‘Wrong question. What do they think she might know?’
‘Maybe,’ Rodman said.
‘What do they think Victor could’ve told her? How big is the mess they think they need to clean?’
‘We need to call this in,’ Rodman said.
‘What are we going to say? What will anyone do with it?’ But Kelson dialed the number on Special Agent Jenkins’s card. An answering service picked up, and Kelson recorded a message – ‘Emma Almonte’s missing.’ He left his name and number and hung up.
Then he called Venus Johnson at the Harrison Street Police Station. When she got on the line, he told her, ‘Emma Almonte just disappeared.’
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