Christine Winsin asked the lawyer, ‘Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?’
The lawyer gave her the tiniest shake of his head.
So Kelson went back to the woman in the blue skirt and said, ‘My bets are on you. If they can’t pin more than a traffic violation and throwing a couple of punches at a cop on him, you’ll have him out in a few hours.’ Then he left the intake room and walked outside into the early evening.
FORTY-TWO
Kelson ate dinner with Sue Ellen at Taquería Uptown.
As he downed his pollo en mole, his mind buzzed with the threats and craziness of the day. He knew he should keep his stories to himself, but as always when his brain spun and lurched, he spilled them.
When he finished, breathless, Sue Ellen looked at him wide-eyed and said, through a mouthful of carnitas, ‘Holy shit, Dad.’
‘Eleven-year-olds shouldn’t talk that way.’
‘Dads shouldn’t tell eleven-year-olds these things.’
‘Fair enough. You want another taco?’
She wanted two.
‘How’s math?’ he asked, while they waited for them.
‘We’re doing proportions,’ she said. ‘I like proportions.’
‘I was never very good at them,’ he said. ‘Even before I got shot in the head – your mom can tell you.’
‘And unit rates. For example, if I drive a car seventy miles an hour for two hours, where will I go?’
‘I don’t know. Peoria?’
‘Jail. I’m too young to drive.’
‘Is that a sixth-grader joke?’
‘No. Are you going to marry Doreen?’
‘Hell, no.’
‘Mom isn’t going to marry Jason either.’
‘Who’s Jason?’
‘Mom’s boyfriend I’m not supposed to tell you about.’
‘Is he nice?’
‘Old.’
‘How old?’
‘Older than you.’
‘Grandpa old?’
‘No. He’s a dentist – like Mom.’
‘Scary. Two dentists. What do they talk about? Molars?’
‘Sex.’
‘Huh?’
‘When they think I’m sleeping.’
‘I didn’t want to know that.’
‘You tell me things I don’t want to know all the time.’
‘But you ask them,’ he said.
‘Did you or didn’t you ask what they talk about?’
‘Right. Want dessert after all this?’
She wanted the flan and the tres leches.
The next morning, Kelson had an appointment with Dr P at the Rehabilitation Institute. When she asked how he’d been doing since their last appointment, he started to tell her the same stories he’d told Sue Ellen over dinner.
Dr P held up a thin hand. ‘We have only a half hour, Sam.’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘You remind me of my daughter, but she listens better.’
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘No you aren’t.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not.’
He said, ‘What does it mean if no matter how hard I try to help others I feel like I’m hurting them?’
Dr P sipped tea from a thermos mug she kept on a table by her chair. During their appointments, she drank from it whenever he said something that demanded thought. Once she drank so much she had to excuse herself to pee. Now she said, ‘It might just mean you’re human. We all do it sometimes. Who did you hurt?’
‘It’s a feeling, is all. I dreamed last night that everyone I know was tangled in balls of string. I picked at the loose ends but that tightened the knots around them.’
‘A strange metaphor, but OK.’
‘They rolled around on a giant floor and got more and more tangled.’
‘Stranger.’
‘Then the balls of string rolled under my bed and made growling sounds.’
‘Ah, a kitten metaphor. How are Payday and Painter’s Lane?’
‘Cute. I think a lot about kittens.’
‘You could have worse fixations. They’re a bright spot.’
‘Why are they tangling everyone I know in string?’
She sipped from her mug. ‘How are the headaches?’
‘I haven’t had a bad one in three days.’
She scribbled a note on a pad she kept in her lap. ‘I want to start weaning you from Percocet.’
‘I like Percocet.’
‘What’s not to like? Except for the constipation, blurred vision, and dry mouth.’
‘I don’t have any of that. You ever work with adults who were abused as kids?’
She laid the pen on the pad. ‘Only if they also suffer from a physical brain injury. I’ve had a couple of patients like that. Why?’
‘What do you make of a woman in her thirties who keeps pictures and videos of her uncle abusing her when she was a kid?’
‘This is someone you know?’
‘A client. One of the people I worry I’m doing more harm than good.’
‘I’d need to talk to her to know. Does she tie her sense of self to the abuse? Did her uncle damage her so badly that she needs these images for sexual pleasure? Is she using the images to gain power over her uncle? All three? Something else? A lot of possibilities.’
‘In my experience, people keep pictures and videos like these because they’re worth money,’ he said. ‘Blackmail. Extortion.’
‘That’s more your professional expertise than mine. Whatever she’s doing, she sounds like she’s in pain. Now, I have a question for you. Why did you change the subject from Percocet?’
‘I like Percocet,’ he said.
‘Yeah, that worries me.’
Kelson drove to his office with a new prescription in his pocket – for half the dosage he’d gotten used to taking. ‘You can pace yourself,’ Dr P had said, as she wrote the order, ‘or you can pop them the way you’re used to and suffer through the rest of the week cold turkey.’
‘Or I can go to a park I know on the westside and buy more off a guy I busted once when I was a narcotics cop,’ Kelson said.
‘Or you can hold a gun to your head and pull the trigger.’
‘One bullet in the head’s enough.’
‘Stay safe,’ she said. ‘Stay clean.’
Now he left his car in the parking garage, rode the elevator to his office, and let himself in.
He sat at his desk, checked his KelTec and Springfield, and returned them to their places. He turned on his laptop and watched the screen as it booted up. Then someone knocked on his door. The knock sounded urgent, and Kelson got the KelTec from the desktop rig and slipped it into the back of his belt.
But when he opened the door, the third lawyer he’d seen in the police station intake room – the woman in the blue skirt – stood in the corridor. She clutched her black briefcase like she might need it as a shield. She looked scared.
He let her in, closed the door, locked it, hesitated – and unlocked it again.
She sat down on one of the client chairs and watched him take his KelTec from his belt and return it to the hidden rig.
‘I need to hire you,’ she said.
‘You and everyone else lately,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
‘They’re trying to kill him.’ Her blond hair looked grayer in the office light than at the station. ‘The police won’t protect him.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’ll pay whatever you charge. He needs to stay safe until he can make arrangements.’ She set the briefcase on the desk and opened it. Kelson let his hand dangle by the underside of his desk, close to the KelTec. But she removed an envelope, took a number of bills topped with a hundred from it, and laid the money on the desk.
‘Who?’ Kelson said. ‘Squirt?’
She looked at him like he was missing the obvious. ‘His name is Stanley Javinsky.’
‘Let’s stick with Squirt.’
FORTY-THREE
‘No,’ Kelson said. ‘No wa
y.’
The lawyer said her name was Jane Richardson. She’d worked for Stanley Javinsky’s family since Javinsky was fourteen and got picked up for shoplifting a plastic bag of bite-sized Kit Kats. Javinsky went downhill from there, landing in jail for auto theft at nineteen. Before that case went to trial, his cellmate tried to kill him. ‘The man almost choked Stanley to death,’ Jane Richardson said. ‘The attack damaged his vocal chords. It put him in the hospital for three months, and, after that, he couldn’t talk right. When he got out of jail, he taught himself that one trick – how to choke a man the way he got choked, the way that changed his life.’
‘He perfected it,’ Kelson said. ‘When we met, he almost turned me into a whisperer. Is that what he used on Ramsey Garner before throwing him out on the highway?’
She sat across from Kelson, nervous, holding her back away from the chair. ‘Stanley says Garner threatened to kill him. Something about him falling down on the job when you had them at your friend’s apartment.’
‘DeMarcus Rodman’s.’
‘Whatever. Stanley says you’re the first man who’s gotten the better of him in the past ten years.’
‘That was DeMarcus’s girlfriend Cindi. DeMarcus and I just swept up the pieces.’
‘Stanley knows you must be angry at him.’
‘Angry? That’s what he said? He almost killed me. He threatened Cindi – my best friend’s girlfriend. He threatened Genevieve Bower – my client. Maybe I’m a little irritated.’
‘I bailed him out seven hours ago. The Cranes already sent a man to try to put him down.’
‘How’d that work out?’ Kelson said.
‘Stanley says he “did” him.’
‘“Did” him?’
‘That’s what he says. When his cellmate choked him, he suffered minor brain damage. It affects his ability to control violent impulses. He says something like that happened to you. He says you’ll understand.’
‘He wants me to sympathize with him? He wants to be pals?’
‘He wants you to look out for him until he can cut a deal with the prosecutors – or can figure out a place far away from here to hide.’
‘No,’ Kelson said. ‘That’s stupid. Why would he come to me?’
‘I told you—’
‘Yeah, we both got conked on the head. Big deal. Still stupid.’
‘Where else does he go? When he got out after stealing the car, he had nothing. Who’d want to be friends with a guy likely to choke them over an argument? Who’d hire an ex-con they couldn’t even put on a phone to do telemarketing? Turns out Harold and Sylvia Crane had a place for him. Now, the Cranes want him dead. You’re all he’s got left.’
‘He’s got you,’ Kelson said. ‘Why worry so much about him?’
She looked embarrassed. ‘I married his brother. My husband’s eleven years older than Stanley. It was one of those second-father situations – until Stanley tried to kill him too. But yeah, he’s got me. I bailed him out, though I can’t keep him safe.’
‘You really feel bad for him?’
‘Bad? Sure. Am I also afraid of him? Absolutely. Do I hate him for making my life harder than it needs to be? Yes. He’s done a lot of terrible things, and he’ll do more in the future. But right now he needs help.’
‘No,’ Kelson said again. ‘No, no, no.’
She stared at him.
‘No,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry you feel this way,’ she said, and she stood up.
‘Would he even talk to the cops if they would listen?’ Kelson said.
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Honestly, I don’t know. He trusts no one.’
‘What would keep him from turning against me if I helped?’
‘Just don’t make him mad,’ she said. ‘He’s loyal to people who treat him well.’
‘Like a pit bull?’
‘Pit bulls are gentler – but less loyal.’
Kelson thought about pit bulls. He thought about Payday and Painter’s Lane in a room with pit bulls. He said, ‘I can’t do it.’
‘I understand,’ she said, though she looked like she didn’t.
‘You’re one of those good people, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘I don’t know what I am. Sometimes I think I’m a fool.’ She went to the door.
Kelson asked, ‘Does he have somewhere to hide for now?’
‘He’s in the men’s room.’
‘The—’
‘Down the hall.’
Kelson shouted at her. ‘You brought him with you?’
‘Where else would I put him?’
‘Anywhere. The sewer. A hole in the ground. You could buy him a bus ticket. Jesus, get him in here before he kills one of the computer school students.’
She gave him a long, uncertain look. ‘Yeah, the two of you should get along.’ She left the office.
A minute later, she tapped on the door and came in again with Stanley Javinsky, who wore jeans and a fresh black T-shirt.
Kelson’s KelTec lay on his lap under the desktop. As Javinsky came to the desk, Kelson said, ‘Keep your hands to yourself. My neck still hurts.’
‘Sorry.’ Javinsky’s voice – the little there was of it – sounded like someone had raked a metal comb down the inside of his throat.
Kelson pointed at a client chair. ‘Sit.’
Javinsky did. Jane Richardson sat in the chair next to his.
‘Why me?’ Kelson asked him.
‘Who else?’ Javinsky said.
‘Sandpaper,’ Kelson said. ‘You sound like you swallowed sandpaper.’
Javinsky’s right hand worked the denim on his right pant leg, and his left biceps twitched.
‘I say too much,’ Kelson said. ‘If you can’t handle that without strangling me, get out now.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘And I’ll try to call you Stanley or, if you prefer, Mr Javinsky, but I’ll probably end up calling you Squirt.’
Javinsky’s left biceps twitched.
‘Cut that out,’ Kelson said.
‘Sorry.’ Grittier than a rasp. ‘I can’t help it.’
‘Me either,’ Kelson said. ‘To tell the truth – and I always tell the truth – I don’t know what I can do for you.’
‘You hid Marty LeCoeur.’ Speaking seemed to cause him pain. ‘And Genevieve Bower. Why not me too? Put me where you put them.’
‘You want me to hide you with them?’
‘If that works.’
Kelson laughed at him. ‘Listen, Squirt, you can sneak from bathroom to bathroom and fool your sister-in-law – if that’s who she really is – but don’t treat me like an idiot. Yesterday you were gunning for Genevieve Bower and Marty LeCoeur, and today you want me to put you with them? Maybe you want me to tie them up for you first and stick an apple in their mouths. Why would I ever believe you? For all I know, you’re still pals with the rest of the G&G security guys.’
Anger fell over Javinsky’s face, and he stood.
Kelson snatched his pistol off his lap and showed it. ‘Easy, Squirt.’
Javinsky pulled up his T-shirt. He’d taped a bandage over the right side of his ribcage. A bloody spot the size of a half dollar had soaked through the gauze. ‘They tried to kill me this morning.’ He had other scars, old and new, and a tattoo of a tiny tiger above his belly.
‘OK, Tiger, sit down,’ Kelson said.
Javinsky eased his shirt over his stomach and sat.
‘Tell me everything,’ Kelson said, ‘and if I like what you tell me, I’ll think about helping. No promises.’
Javinsky told him very little. Maybe the Cranes kept their family secrets tight. Maybe they considered Javinsky too deranged and undependable to trust with inner-circle information. Maybe he knew more than he let on. He admitted he knew about Genevieve Bower’s thumb drive – the Cranes said he could do what he wanted to her as long as he got the computer files. But he denied knowing what those files were. When Kelson, unable to stop himself, told him what Genevieve had said – that t
he drive held videos of Harold Crane abusing her – Javinsky dug at his pant leg and his biceps twitched again. He admitted that G&G worked with dirty money. He’d made two previous accountants disappear – he’d bought a plane ticket to Costa Rica for one and shipped the other back to his family in Latvia. His voice sounded sandier and sandier as he went on, every word ripping at the damaged tissue in his throat. Harold Crane called most of the important shots, he said, though the orders often passed through Sylvia or Chip Voudreaux.
When Javinsky finished, Jane Richardson looked at Kelson hopefully.
‘What?’ he said to her.
‘Can you?’ she said. ‘For a few days? Until we work something out?’
Kelson had one more question for Javinsky. ‘Tell me about the little tiger tattoo on your belly.’
‘I got it after they let me out of jail that first time,’ Javinsky said. ‘It’s a tiger kitten.’
‘Damn,’ Kelson said. ‘It had to be a kitten.’
With his KelTec in his lap, he dialed Marty at his hideaway and said, ‘I’ve got an idea, and I want you to tell me it’s insane.’
FORTY-FOUR
‘Are you fucking crazy?’ Marty said when Kelson told him Stanley Javinsky’s request. ‘No fucking way.’
‘That’s what I told him,’ Kelson said, but then he mentioned that Javinsky killed Ramsey Garner – who’d set up Victor Almonte with the bomb that ripped Neto apart – and then chucked Garner out of his car like an empty beer can. ‘So he kind of got revenge for you – kind of.’
‘Ah, fuck,’ Marty said.
‘Which means?’
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
‘I thought you might feel this way,’ Kelson said.
‘If he tries anything, I swear I’ll kill him,’ Marty said.
‘If he doesn’t kill you first.’
When Kelson knocked on the basement apartment door a half hour later, Marty opened it looking angry, but he softened at the sight of Javinsky the way twins separated at birth sometimes feel an immediate affinity when reunited as adults. Within five minutes, Marty offered to heat a can of pork ’n’ beans for the man.
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