Lucky Bones

by Michael Wiley

  ‘We had a brief conversation with him,’ Christine Winsin said. ‘If you must know, Harold and Sylvia Crane outbid us for him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The information Mr Javinsky could sell – about where to find Marty LeCoeur and the account information he has – is even more valuable to the Cranes than it is to us. That doesn’t mean we want what’s ours any less. It just means the Cranes have more to lose in this instance.’

  ‘Squirt sold out Marty?’ Kelson got up from bed and started to put on a shirt.

  ‘At a very attractive price.’

  Kelson pulled on his pants. ‘Give me my guns.’

  Bob Winsin said, ‘Are you really this stupid?’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere without them.’

  Bob Winsin said, ‘We have Sue Ellen.’

  Kelson took a single step and slugged him in the face. The man fell hard on the carpet.

  Christine Winsin said, ‘Bob’s lying.’ Then, to her other brother, ‘Give him his guns. He’ll use them wisely.’

  David Winsin pulled the KelTec and Springfield from his satchel and gave them to Kelson.

  Kelson pointed the guns at him and his sister. ‘Get the hell out.’ He nodded at the man on the carpet. ‘And drag him with you.’

  ‘Or not so wisely,’ Christine Winsin said – then to David again, ‘give him his ammunition.’

  ‘Really?’ Kelson said. He released the magazine from the Springfield. Empty. ‘Shit.’ He checked the KelTec magazine. The same.

  ‘This all works better if we trust each other,’ Christine Winsin said.

  ‘You break into my apartment in the middle of the night. You threaten me. You threaten my daughter. And you ask me to trust you?’

  David Winsin said, ‘We used a key.’

  ‘That’s still breaking in,’ Kelson said.

  ‘I’m sorry Bob threatened your daughter,’ Christine Winsin said.

  ‘Give me the ammunition,’ Kelson said.

  David Winsin scooped the bullets from the bottom of the satchel and poured them into Kelson’s hand. Kelson sat on his bed, sorting the bullets for the KelTec from the ones for the Springfield, reloading the magazines, and sliding the magazines into the guns. Christine and David Winsin watched. Bob Winsin stirred on the carpet, sat up, and looked bewildered, a red welt rising on his left cheek, his left eye swelling shut.

  When Kelson finished with the guns, he aimed them at Christine and David Winsin again. David Winsin shook his head as if Kelson would never learn.

  Kelson said, ‘Where did you see Squirt?’

  Christine Winsin pressed her lips together. ‘We arranged a meeting with the Cranes at Sylvia’s house. They’ve put Chip Voudreaux in a room and have Stanley Javinsky guarding him. As I said, it was a short conversation.’

  ‘The Cranes have Voudreaux?’

  David Winsin still shook his head, disappointed in Kelson.

  ‘Stop that,’ Kelson told him.

  ‘We thought you knew,’ Christine Winsin said.

  Kelson lowered the Springfield, though he held the KelTec steady. ‘They figured out he was trying to steal the money?’

  ‘The two of them were trying, yes,’ she said. ‘But now he wants to go to the police.’

  Bob Winsin pushed himself to his knees, then stood up, wobbly.

  ‘The two of them?’ Kelson said.

  Christine Winsin’s eyes showed mild surprise. ‘Chip Voudreaux and Genevieve Bower, yes.’

  Kelson almost dropped his guns. ‘She was in it with him?’

  ‘Jesus help us,’ David Winsin said.

  His sister stepped back. ‘Stop waving your guns around, Mr Kelson.’

  Kelson went to the dining table where he’d left his shoulder holster hours earlier. He strapped it on over his shirt. ‘The other numbers,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Christine Winsin said.

  ‘When Marty looked at the files on the thumb drive, he saw a string of numbers he couldn’t identify. It was her. Genevieve Bower. She and Voudreaux must’ve figured they had the money coming to them after what Harold Crane did to them.’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Christine Winsin said.

  ‘It’s why she wouldn’t go to the police even after the Cranes’ men beat her up – or even after they broke into her motel room and then kidnapped her from my apartment. It’s why she tried to stage JollyOllie as a suicide when she found him dead in his apartment. It was all or nothing.’

  ‘It’s time to go,’ Christine Winsin said. ‘We’ve let the Cranes know our relationship with them is over. If they go wherever Stanley Javinsky tells them to before we get there, we won’t see our money again.’

  Her brothers moved toward the door.

  But Kelson froze. ‘My phone.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Christine Winsin said.

  Kelson aimed both of his guns at David Winsin and gestured at his satchel. ‘I won’t take you there without warning them we’re coming.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that make them leave before we get there?’ David Winsin asked.

  ‘It might. They get to decide.’

  David Winsin reached into his satchel again. But he pulled out a large black pistol and aimed it at Kelson.

  ‘Trust works both ways,’ Christine Winsin said. ‘When we reach Marty LeCoeur’s place, you can call him. Not a moment sooner.’

  Kelson lowered his guns. ‘You’re tough,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and she turned toward the door. ‘No one tougher.’

  FIFTY-ONE

  Something in the building on Wabash was burning. Smoke snaked from the shattered lobby doors, crossed the sidewalk, and slid into the street. Four firetrucks, six police cruisers, and an ambulance lined the curb. As Kelson and the Winsins ducked under the police tape and walked up the opposite sidewalk, a half dozen firefighters in oxygen masks, helmets, and flame-retardant overalls and jackets stepped through the smoke into the building as if shouldering past an invisible monster. They carried axes and picks, fire extinguishers, and pry bars. Bright lights mounted on the sides of two of the trucks shined on the dark face of the building. A man without a helmet shouted into a handheld radio, and the truck engines rumbled.

  For all that, no one seemed in a rush. There was smoke but no visible blaze.

  ‘A little thing,’ Kelson said.

  Christine Winsin stepped into the street, her heels clicking on the pavement, and went to the man with the handheld radio. She looked up at him and spoke, and he looked down at her – as if an odd little bird had landed on the street beside him in the smoky night – and answered. When she came back to Kelson and her brothers, she said, ‘The fire started in some basement rooms. But no one’s there.’

  ‘Which means the Cranes have them – or they got out before the Cranes came in,’ Kelson said.

  David Winsin reached into the satchel and gave him his phone.

  ‘Right.’ Kelson dialed Rodman’s cell number.

  The phone rang once and Rodman answered, saying, ‘Don’t go to Marty’s place.’

  ‘I’m there right now,’ Kelson said, ‘along with about fifty firefighters – and the Winsins. Are you OK?’

  ‘The Cranes sent some of their biggest and baddest. But I’m bigger and badder than they are, or at least we were quicker. Marty saw them coming on his security monitor, so we hid in the stairwell while the jerks rode the elevator to the basement. What are you doing with the Winsins?’

  ‘They got this funny idea that I like people coming into my apartment without knocking. Now they want their missing money. Joke’s on them.’

  ‘How did they get you to take them to Marty’s?’

  Christine Winsin moved close to Kelson. ‘Ask where they are.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Kelson told her.

  David Winsin reached into the satchel again and left his hand there, as if to show Kelson he was aiming his pistol at him.

  Kelson turned his back on him. ‘A lot of gun and a little logic,’ he told Rodman. �
��They say they only want their money, and they gave me information that’ll help us get the Cranes.’

  ‘Dirty money,’ Rodman said, ‘and they see an opportunity because we’ve hurt the Cranes. What did they tell you?’

  ‘First, Genevieve Bower and Chip Voudreaux tried to steal the G&G money together.’

  ‘Well, shit.’

  ‘Second, the Cranes have locked up Voudreaux at Sylvia’s house. Third, Voudreaux wants to go to the cops.’

  Christine Winsin inched around Kelson and faced him again. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Shh,’ he said, then, to Rodman, ‘did you take Marty’s computer with you?’

  ‘Hell, yeah – and he’s through to Neto’s account.’

  ‘It’s up to you whether I bring the Winsins to you,’ Kelson said. ‘If you think it’s a stupid idea, I’ll cross the street and talk with the cops.’

  David Winsin stepped around him. He let the pistol barrel peek at Kelson from the top of the satchel.

  ‘Even your money wouldn’t buy you out of that kind of trouble,’ Kelson told him.

  ‘Let me talk to Marty and Cindi,’ Rodman said.

  Kelson looked at Christine Winsin. ‘Hold on.’

  When Rodman came back, he said, ‘What the hell, let’s make it a party. If we don’t like their company, we’ll kick them down the back stairs.’ He told Kelson where they were hiding.

  ‘In plain sight, as it turns out,’ Kelson said to the Winsins as they drove toward the Bronzeville neighborhood where Rodman and Cindi lived.

  Five minutes after they swung into the alley by the Ebenezer Baptist Church and climbed the steps to Rodman’s apartment, the Winsins were haggling with Marty under the gaze of the paintings of Malcolm X, Cindi, and Martin Luther King.

  ‘You only want what’s yours?’ Marty asked.

  Christine Winsin said, ‘Five million, eighty-three thousand, eight hundred and seventy-seven dollars.’

  ‘What about my commission?’ Marty said.

  ‘We let you live. Is that enough?’ Christine Winsin said.

  ‘That and thirty percent,’ he said.

  She smiled as if she appreciated the tough little man. ‘Let’s make it an even five million. You keep the eighty-three thousand.’

  ‘What about the rest of the money?’ he asked.

  ‘Do what you want with it,’ she said. ‘We want only what’s ours. We’re honest people.’

  ‘There’s nothing honest about you, honey,’ Marty said.

  ‘Honorable, then,’ she said.

  ‘I can work with that,’ he said.

  ‘How much is the rest?’ Kelson asked.

  ‘After the five million?’ Marty wiggled his outstretched hand. ‘Another thirty-one or thirty-two – in the neighborhood.’

  ‘Fancy neighborhood,’ Kelson said.

  So Marty plugged in his computer, tapped into Rodman’s Wi-Fi, and thirty minutes later routed five million dollars from Neto’s account – which he’d started calling ‘my account’ – into three separate offshore banks where the Winsins kept money. While Marty worked, the Winsins sipped coffee that Rodman brought from the kitchen. Even Bob Winsin, despite the welt on his face and his swollen eye, looked at ease with his place in the world.

  When Marty showed Christine Winsin the adjusted accounts, she sighed and said, ‘All this trouble. Was it necessary?’

  ‘Shit happens,’ Marty said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Shit happens. But it mustn’t happen again. I worry that with your abilities and your knowledge of us, you could go into our accounts again and empty them – not only of the money you’ve returned. That mustn’t be the case.’

  David Winsin had left his gun in the satchel on the floor by his ankles, but everyone in the room understood the woman’s threat. Marty said, ‘Ma’am, if I wanted to get into your panties, I could. But I believe in honor too.’

  She considered him. ‘I guess we’ll have to be satisfied with that.’

  Two hours before dawn, she thanked Rodman for the coffee and led her brothers out and down to the street. Rodman stared at the door as if he expected her to burst back through. Then he went to it and locked it. Marty watched the door and said, ‘If she was thirty years younger, I could fall in love, Janet or no Janet.’ Then he turned to his computer and, in twenty minutes, he buried access to the remaining thirty-one or thirty-two million dollars under lines and lines of encryption code. ‘I’m like a fucking dog,’ he said, as he typed. ‘Like a fucking dog burying a fucking bone.’

  FIFTY-TWO

  Kelson found Sylvia Crane’s address by searching online property records for the town of Mundelein and then the surrounding towns of Libertyville, Vernon Hills, Hawthorn Woods, and Long Grove. He expanded the rings until he found a two-acre plot with an enormous house on Cambridge Lane in Lake Forest, twenty-five minutes from the G&G headquarters.

  As the sun rose, Kelson and Rodman laid their weapons on one end of the couch, under Malcolm X’s gaze – Kelson’s two pistols, Rodman’s snub-nose Colt, his big Beretta, and a Walther semiautomatic rifle with a twenty-inch barrel, which he pulled from the cabinet under the kitchen sink.

  ‘Dibs,’ Marty said, and picked up the Walther.

  Rodman let his eyelids hang low. ‘Dibs?’

  ‘Fuck, yeah,’ Marty said.

  At nine, Kelson, Rodman, and Marty rode in Rodman’s van to a South Halsted store called The Cop Shop, which sold everything from pink T-shirts that said Sleep tight, Chicago, we got this to Blackhawk duty holsters, knee-high combat boots, and Damascus riot gear. The clerk spent twenty minutes finding a Kevlar vest that fitted Rodman. Marty settled for a bright yellow petite vest, which he refused to take off once he got the Velcro straps right, instead grabbing a pair of mirrored tactical sunglasses off a display and marching around the store in them.

  ‘Give the man a little money, and see what he turns into,’ Rodman said.

  Rodman and Kelson laid their vests on the counter and picked three folding combat knives from a glass case.

  Along with the yellow vest, glasses, and knife, Marty wanted a black leather glove with integrated steel knuckles.

  ‘Why?’ Rodman said.

  ‘For later,’ Marty said.

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ Rodman said.

  ‘I do,’ Kelson said.

  Marty said, ‘It’s a thing I do. Janet’s cool with it, so why shouldn’t I?’

  After putting their purchases in the van with the guns they ate a second breakfast up the block at a diner called George’s, because, as Rodman said, ‘We’re skipping lunch today. Either we’re sitting with cops as they pound us for our stupidity, or we’re bleeding in a hospital.’

  ‘Or worse,’ Kelson said.

  ‘I don’t see it,’ Marty said. ‘I see us doing the fucking job and driving away. Maybe you need a shower afterward. Me, I’m going in and out clean.’

  They filled their bellies with eggs, pancakes, and bacon anyway.

  Then they drove north to Lake Forest in mid-morning traffic. It was the last day of May, and the air was warm, the sky clear, so they rode with the windows open. Kelson called the main number at G&G and asked the receptionist to put him through to Sylvia Crane.

  ‘She’s not in today,’ the receptionist said.

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ Kelson said. ‘Harold Crane?’

  ‘I can take a message,’ the receptionist said.

  ‘I’ll deliver it myself.’ Kelson hung up.

  Downtown Lake Forest had shops for the kinds of people who had Lake Forest needs – luxury foods, Italian housewares, and designer clothing, with a UPS store in case the residents wanted to send friends and relatives luxury foods, Italian housewares, and designer clothing.

  ‘Just like the hood,’ Rodman said.

  ‘Just like the westside warehouse district where I grew up,’ Marty said.

  ‘Just like the inside of my head,’ Kelson said.

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Marty said, and, whe
n Kelson started to explain, said, ‘Please don’t tell me.’

  Sylvia Crane lived on a thickly wooded lot at the top of a gently rising slope. Rodman, Kelson, and Marty pulled into the end of the long driveway, and Rodman turned the van sideways across the pavement so it would block cars from coming in or leaving. As they readied their guns, they glanced at the house. It was all white, with a veranda that extended across half of the long front, and big windows, rounded at the top, where the veranda ended. The house rose two stories, plus a high dormered roof where hired help could live.

  ‘A damn hotel,’ Rodman said. He pinched little bullets and dropped them into the little revolver cylinder.

  ‘An inn,’ Kelson said. ‘Like the ones you see in old movies – with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. The kind of place that should always be surrounded by snow.’

  ‘Like Holiday Inn,’ Marty said, ‘where they sing “White Christmas”.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Kelson said. He popped the magazine from the KelTec, checked that he’d loaded it tight, and popped it back in. ‘I didn’t see you as a movie guy,’ he said to Marty.

  ‘I love that fucking movie,’ the little man said. ‘Always makes me cry.’

  ‘It’s a musical comedy.’ Kelson popped the magazine from the Springfield, checked it.

  ‘To each his own,’ Marty said, and he jacked a round into the chamber of the Walther.

  ‘Looks more like that lodge in The Shining,’ Rodman said, and climbed out of the van.

  Standing at the end of the driveway, Kelson called Venus Johnson, got voicemail, and said, ‘If you hear this message anytime soon, you’ll want to scoot up to Cambridge Lane in Lake Forest. Three of us are about to visit Sylvia Crane.’

  Then he called the Lake Forest police.

  ‘I want to report shots fired,’ he told the dispatcher, and gave her the address.

  The dispatcher tried to keep him on the line. ‘How many shots?’ she asked. ‘Is anyone shooting now?’

  ‘They’re about to start,’ Kelson said, and hung up.

  The men marched up the driveway toward the house.

  ‘Lightheaded with fear,’ Kelson said to Rodman and Marty, or to himself – he wasn’t sure.

  ‘No,’ Marty said, strutting in his little yellow vest.