Doreen said, ‘If he wants to, he can.’
‘Can what?’ Francisca asked.
‘Kill us all,’ Doreen said. ‘If he wants to.’
In the pauses in the clattering gunfire, approaching sirens wailed. Still Kelson, Rodman, and Marty shot down at the street. Still Toselli and his men fired into the apartment, filling the air with strange dust.
Until they stopped.
And the dust filtered to the floor.
Then Kelson, Rodman, and Marty stood in the hard silence of the apartment, and a gentle March breeze played through the blown-out windows. They looked at each other, checking for wounds.
As the first squad car turned a corner and headed for the building, Rodman asked, ‘Ready for them?’
‘All my life,’ Kelson said. But when he glanced at Doreen and Francisca, Doreen gave him a look that bored through her narcotic dullness and seemed to plead for help. So he said, ‘But get her out of here.’
There was no time to argue or ask why. Two more squad cars came around the corner and skidded to a stop behind the first. Kelson’s companions could act on his wish without hesitating, or they could give Doreen to the cops.
Rodman said to Marty, ‘Take her down the back.’ And to Cindi, ‘Can you go with them?’
‘Where?’
Kelson dug his keys from his pocket and gave her the one for Nancy’s house – which would be empty if Nancy had taken Sue Ellen to a hotel. He helped Doreen to her feet between Cindi and Francisca and ushered them out of the back door.
When he returned to the front, seven squad cars were parked on the street, and four cops, pistols in their hands, came up the stairs, stopped at the second-floor landing, and charged up the next flight.
When they reached the landing, Rodman stood in the open doorway with his hands over his head. Kelson stood beside him, hands over his.
SIXTY
All afternoon and into the early evening, a forensic team photographed Rodman’s apartment, measured angles of incidence, and pried bullets from the walls and ceiling. Another team collected bullets and casings from the street below. They bagged Kelson’s KelTec and Rodman’s pistol. News vans lined the curb beyond the police perimeter. Neighbors stood beside reporters or watched from the windows of facing buildings.
Peters arrived and interviewed Kelson and Rodman.
‘How many of them were there?’ he asked.
‘Three,’ Rodman said.
Peters looked to Kelson.
He agreed. ‘Three.’
‘Three of them shot it out with the two of you?’ Peters said.
‘That’s right,’ Rodman said.
Again Peters looked to Kelson.
‘Plus the little one-armed guy,’ Kelson said.
‘Goddamn it,’ Peters said, ‘I’m not fucking around.’
Then Kelson’s lawyer, Edward Davies, walked in from outside and said to Peters, ‘That’s it. No more questions.’
Peters said, ‘Who the hell let him in?’
Kelson said, ‘I called while we were waiting for you.’
‘I’ll talk to you,’ Rodman said to Peters. ‘I’ll tell you everything I think you need to know.’
When the last cop left – and Edward Davies convinced himself that Kelson needed no more immediate help – Kelson and Rodman swept and secured the apartment. They needed more plywood for the windows, but for now they tacked up blankets. Before hanging the last one, they stared out at the street. Along with bullet-pocked cars and shattered glass gleaming under the streetlights, a police van idled at the curb. According to Peters, the van would stay all night. Another would circle the neighborhood.
‘Reassured?’ Kelson asked Rodman.
‘Toselli’s a hyena,’ Rodman said. ‘I’m with your girlfriend on this one – if he wants to, he can.’
‘Don’t call her my girlfriend.’
Then the blue Buick driven by Nuñez’s men cruised up the street and pulled to the curb about a hundred feet behind the police van. A brown Chevy Impala with tinted windows pulled into the space behind it.
Rodman said, ‘What the hell are they up to?’
‘Building forces?’ Kelson said. ‘Getting ready to make a move? Hitting after we’ve been weakened by another battle?’
Rodman shook his head. ‘What are they going to do with the cops here?’
So they hung the blanket and turned on the TV to check the latest on the manhunt.
The police superintendent – a thick-faced black man with a little mustache – said the department had the situation under control. Then he warned everyone to stay inside. He never blinked at the contradiction in his messages. A whole department of good cops was chasing one bad one, he said. He allowed a confident smile. That put the odds against Toselli at around twelve thousand to one.
At the end of the news conference, the reporter recapped the events since Toselli had grabbed the rookie’s gun. He described the firefight at Rodman’s apartment, narrating over a late-afternoon video of the front of Rodman’s Bronzeville building as cops went into and out of the entrance. Then the video cut to Toselli’s Dearborn Park townhouse, and the reporter explained that the police bomb squad had pulled out a package of counterfeit explosives.
‘Your girlfriend had that one wrong,’ Rodman said.
‘Or else it’s more distraction,’ Kelson said, ‘and Toselli didn’t want his mom sleeping with a bomb.’
Rodman thought for a moment. ‘We could use that against him.’
‘Blow up his mom?’
‘How do you trip up a good man? Exploit whatever’s bad in him. How do you trip up a bad man? Exploit whatever’s good. Who does he still care about?’
‘His mom, apparently. Until this afternoon, I would’ve said Sue Ellen. Until a couple of days ago, I would’ve said me.’
‘What does he care about?’
‘His principles. First in. No man left behind. Relentless force. Superior firepower. Expecting the unexpected from others and being unexpected himself.’
‘So what do we expect a man to do when twelve thousand cops are chasing him?’
‘Run,’ Kelson said.
‘Sure.’
‘Or hide,’ Kelson said.
Rodman said, ‘A smart man would do anything but take the fight into the open. He would hole up in a safe house or ride a plane to the end of the world. The cops know that Toselli’s smart, and so they’re shining flashlights into every hiding hole they can think of, reviewing airport security, and checking flight manifests. Toselli knows they know he’s smart. And since he’s a cop, he knows how they’ll spend their energy looking for a smart guy like him. That means he also knows it would be dumb to act smart in the ways they think he will. He’ll take it where no one expects him next – no pause for breath – just like when he came here.’
‘So he goes back to Stevens’s office? Or Nancy’s house?’
Rodman shrugged and dialed Cindi’s cellphone number.
It rang until voicemail picked up.
He asked her to call as soon as she got the message, then dialed Marty LeCoeur.
The little man’s phone rang and rang and rang.
‘That’s not good,’ Rodman said.
Kelson headed for the door. ‘Let’s go to Nancy’s house.’
‘Try Stevens first?’
Kelson dialed the Stevens Group building. An after-hours recording gave him a menu of options. Kelson picked the one for the security desk. The line rang twice and Esteban Herrera answered.
Stevens left two hours ago, Herrera told him.
‘Did any cops follow him when he left?’
‘Guess not,’ Herrera said. ‘No cops here all day.’
So Kelson tried Stevens’s cellphone.
When the call jumped to voicemail, he left the same message Rodman left for Cindi – Call as soon as you get this. Then he dialed and left the message again on Stevens’s home phone.
When he hung up, he said, ‘You want to check on Cindi and the others while I ch
eck Stevens?’
Rodman said, ‘We should stay together.’
‘And ignore which one?’
Rodman frowned. He went into his bedroom, rooted through a dresser drawer, and came out with a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson – his backup pistol. He gave it to Kelson. ‘Go fully loaded.’
Kelson said, ‘And how about you?’
‘Marty’s carrying.’
‘Unless Toselli took his gun.’ He tried to give Rodman back the pistol.
‘You take it,’ Rodman said, ‘or we stay together.’
‘Why?’
‘A long time ago I decided I’d rather take a bullet than see someone I care about take one.’
So Kelson stuck the pistol in his belt, but he said, ‘Don’t take a bullet. It hurts.’
Then Rodman went to check on Cindi, Doreen, Francisca, and Marty, while Kelson drove to Stevens’s two-flat on North Burling – the Buick and the Chevy Impala right behind him.
SIXTY-ONE
When Kelson parked in front, the cars that tailed him stopped in the middle of the street. ‘One thing at a time,’ Kelson said, and stared at the two-flat. The downstairs was dark, but lights shined from the upstairs windows. He thought he saw movement inside one of the rooms, so he dialed Stevens’s home number and, when no one picked up, tried his cell.
Nothing.
He removed the magazine from Rodman’s pistol, rolled it in his hand, and slid it back in. He climbed the steps to Stevens’s front door. No one got out of the other cars.
Kelson rang the doorbell and listened. Although many people were heeding the police warnings to stay off the street, the sound of traffic filtered in from a block away, and then a siren whined over the traffic. The Buick and the Chevy idled nearby. ‘Like purring kittens,’ Kelson said.
He rang the bell again.
When no one came, he tried the door handle.
It turned – unlocked.
He backed away from the door, stepping down to the front walk. He glanced at the idling cars, then watched the upstairs windows. Nothing moved. So he called Rodman, who was still a half mile from Nancy’s house.
‘Lights are on,’ he said. ‘No one’s answering. Door’s unlocked.’
‘Don’t do it,’ Rodman said. ‘Call Dan Peters.’
‘Good idea,’ Kelson said.
‘I mean it,’ Rodman said. ‘You walk in there, you don’t know who’s waiting.’
‘Only one way to find out.’
‘Actually, that’s not true,’ Rodman said. ‘A couple of dozen cops can go in through the front and the back. They can knock down the walls if they want.’
‘That would work too.’
‘Hang on,’ Rodman said. ‘I’m calling Peters.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t go in.’
But then, without pulling from the middle of the street, Nuñez’s two men climbed out of the Buick, and Nuñez himself climbed from the Chevy Impala. All three carried pistols. As if they’d practiced such things, they chambered bullets at the same moment and drifted toward Kelson.
‘Tell Peters to hurry, will you?’ Kelson said to Rodman. Then he hung up, climbed the front steps, and went into the house.
The downstairs hall was dark and cool. It smelled like a place where no one had ever lived. Kelson listened, then told the darkness, ‘Nothing and—’ He yelled Toselli’s name. He listened. ‘No one.’
As Nuñez and his men came up the front steps outside, Kelson found the bannister in the dark and inched up the stairs. He said, ‘If you’re up there, Toselli, I’m coming – I wish I was anywhere but – I’m coming. And, Stevens, if you’re there and can’t speak, there’s not much I can do but I’ll do it.’ He came to the top stair and stopped. He could choose between two brightly lighted rooms toward the front of the house and two dark rooms in back. He moved toward the lighted one where he thought he’d seen movement from outside.
The doorway led into a master bedroom decorated in grays and browns. At one end there was a fireplace, a leather divan, and a thick rug. A black-bladed ceiling fan turned lazily. A king-size bed stood across from the fireplace. In the middle of the mattress, Stevens lay curled on his side.
Kelson heard the front door swing open downstairs, but he spoke to Stevens. ‘Hey?’
Stevens didn’t respond.
Kelson went to him.
A bullet hole – so tiny and precise it could’ve been made with an awl – descended through Stevens’s ear canal. A shot straight into the brain.
Kelson yelled, ‘Toselli, you bastard.’
A voice answered from downstairs.
Then more than one voice.
Then an eruption of shouting – in English, in Spanish, shouting, rage.
Then gunfire – an enormous explosion of ammunition, half a house away from Kelson but as ferocious and extraordinary as when he and Bicho shot each other in a Ravenswood alley.
Footsteps retreated out the front door and down the outside steps. Kelson moved to the front window and watched Nuñez and his men scrambling across the sidewalk into the street. Nuñez dragged a leg as if he’d taken a bullet in the hip. One of his men bled from the neck.
Toselli came out after them and stopped on the sidewalk. As Nuñez and his men leaned for their cars, Toselli raised his gun and squared his shoulders.
He shot.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
A spot of blood burst from the back of one of Nuñez’s men, then the other, then Nuñez. They fell face down on the concrete.
Kelson knew then that Toselli had saved him again. But he knew something else, and Toselli confirmed it by turning from the men he’d killed and staring up at the window where Kelson watched. Toselli pointed up at him and said, loudly enough for him to hear through the glass, ‘Not them. Me.’ Kelson knew Toselli had saved him only to kill him.
Toselli ran toward the house, and Kelson heard footsteps on the stairs.
He’d expected this moment. He would stand by Stevens’s bed and exchange gunfire with Toselli. One or both of them would fall. He would never learn whether he or Bicho shot first – but now he didn’t care.
He yelled, ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ There was joy in that realization. Bicho shot at him and he shot at Bicho. Bicho died … and that was as it should be. Kelson lived … and that was as it should be too. He yelled again, ‘Who the fuck cares?’ Then he realized something else. Not only did he remain alive after Bicho shot him, but he really, really liked living. Which presented another problem.
So he ran across the room and hid in the closet. He crouched low to the floor – almost, like Stevens, fetal.
He heard Toselli stop at the doorway and look in, then move to the other rooms. From the other side of a wall that the closet shared with the hallway, Toselli called out, ‘Kelson?’
If Kelson could have torn out his own tongue, he would have. If he could have bitten into his own flesh and silenced himself – if his damaged brain …
‘Kelson?’ Toselli yelled again. ‘Where’d you go, my friend?’
Like a child playing hide-and-seek and unable to contain his excitement, Kelson answered. ‘Here.’
For a moment, there was silence. Then Toselli spoke from the other side of the wall. ‘You know how this works now, don’t you?’ He spoke as if still whispering in Kelson’s apartment, as if Sue Ellen had never interrupted.
Kelson answered through the wall, in a voice as quiet as Toselli’s. ‘You’re a real bastard.’
For another moment, there was silence as Kelson waited for an answer. Then bullets blasted the wall, punching holes where Kelson’s chest would have been if he’d stood. Dust snowed on him from the wallboard. Toselli squirted another dozen shots, then ran to the doorway and into the bedroom.
As Toselli came to the closet, Kelson stood and threw his shoulder against the cratered wall. He tumbled through into the hallway. As he crawled away, more gunshots blasted from Toselli’s automatic.
; Kelson scrambled to his feet and ran up the hall. Toselli yelled after him – his name – something else he meant to send him to hell – Kelson didn’t know what – he couldn’t hear – his head was screaming an insane music. Gun in hand, hand on gun – so tight the skin could’ve grafted to the metal – he went to the bedroom doorway and rounded into the room.
Toselli was groping at the hole Kelson fell through.
Kelson aimed the Smith & Wesson at his old friend’s back.
Toselli smashed the wallboard with his gun butt. Then he realized he’d outsmarted himself. He pulled himself from the closet, stood straight, and turned to face Kelson.
‘Ha,’ Toselli said.
Kelson shot him in the head.
SIXTY-TWO
They got together at Kelson’s apartment, though Kelson said, ‘Having a party after all of this makes no sense.’
‘I’ll bring beer,’ Rodman said.
Kelson said, ‘Last time a friend brought beer didn’t work out so well.’
‘I won’t bring a Frisbee.’
So at eight in the evening on the last day of March, Marty and his girlfriend Janet arrived with hummus and pita chips. Kelson’s lawyer, Edward Davies, brought guacamole. Francisca was in Florida, staying with relatives. Nancy didn’t come, but Sue Ellen did. Rodman invited Dan Peters and Venus Johnson. No one expected them to show, but when they finished their shift, they did. They also brought beer.
‘Bad luck,’ Kelson said as he put it in the fridge.
Then Doreen Felbanks came to the door. She wore black leggings and a big hot-pink angora sweater, which hid her bandages. A judge had made her wear an ankle monitor, which she’d decorated with a thin gold chain. She’d gone to a salon, and her hair was bright, bright red. The other guests stared at her in silence as she stood inside doorway. But Kelson crossed the room and said, ‘Hello, Hot Pants.’
She did look hot too, the others had to admit. Especially considering what she’d gone through.
On the night Kelson killed Toselli, Cindi and Marty hadn’t picked up their phones when Rodman called because Doreen started bleeding again as they drove to Nancy’s house. Cindi couldn’t stop the flow and told her she could go to the hospital or die.
Trouble in Mind Page 24