I hung up and turned onto the on-ramp to the Eisenhower Expressway. Samuelson had become quiet but still breathed deep wet breaths.
“Now you get to tell me why you’re doing what you’re doing. It makes no sense to me—you, the Stones, Judy Terrano, William DuBuclet, you’re all part of a game, but I don’t understand the rules and I don’t know what you’ve been playing for.”
He answered with more deep wet breaths.
“The clip in my gun holds thirteen rounds,” I said to him. “I loaded it with ten. That’s how many were in it when you took it from me in my office. You shot one into the Stones’ wall. Did you plan to use the other nine on us?”
He stared through the front windshield at the morning traffic and said nothing.
“Your wife looked worried, clinging onto Eric Stone like that. But I don’t think you planned to shoot her. You had the chance and you let it pass. Who else? Not me. You could’ve shot me in my office. You didn’t want to shoot any of us, did you? ‘Not yet.’ That’s what you said to David Stone. ‘Not yet.’ ”
Again no answer.
“You wanted something, though, and I don’t think it was to see Cassie Stone wandering around in her bikini. But she was worth the ticket price for me, a bit of sunshine on a cold fall day.”
Nothing.
“Look, I don’t think you killed Judy Terrano and I don’t think you shot yourself. But the cops will hang this on you. They’re so pissed off, you might never get to court. They’ll find you dead in your cell—no one will argue it wasn’t suicide.”
He grunted.
“I figure you were in the room when Sister Terrano died. I figure whoever killed her shot you. Who did it? One of William DuBuclet’s followers? One of the Stone brothers?—David?”
He said nothing. His eyes told me nothing.
I felt like hitting him. “What the hell do you get out of this?”
We rode like that: me making noise, him making silence. Then I snatched up my cell phone and punched in Lucinda’s number again. It rang until the answering machine picked up, but I didn’t have anything to add.
So I dialed Corrine.
“I’ve got a favor to ask,” I said after we told each other hello. I told her about Jason’s trouble at school.
“I’ve got appointments this morning, Joe. I can’t cancel them.”
“I know. Can you take him with you?”
She sighed. “How long?”
“Ten o’clock. Maybe eleven.”
“Ten,” she said. “No later. And you owe me.”
“I’ll pay you back anyway you like.”
“Hmm,” she said, and I heard desire in that sound.
I let myself think about ways I could repay her. Then I exited at Division, and before I could slow, the passenger door swung open. Samuelson had gotten to the door handle—I don’t know how. He leaned his body out and hung like a hammock over the open pavement. He kicked his feet against the mat and his body lowered.
I hit the brakes and grabbed him by the belt. He struggled as much as a half-dead guy can struggle. I heaved him back into the car, pulled to the side, and stopped. “What the hell are you doing?” I yelled.
He stared out the front windshield.
I clenched my left fist and leaned in on him.
He closed his eyes like he was getting ready to sleep.
I climbed out, went around the car. “You want to die? Get the hell out of the car! I’ll push you into the traffic!”
He sat where he was. Tears formed under his closed eyes and streamed down his face. He sobbed.
“Oh, Jesus!” I said, and I slammed his door.
We sat on the side of the exit ramp, him sobbing, me listening to his sobs and thinking I would prefer almost any other sound, even his moans. The sobbing made him human and I preferred to think of him as a crazed, sick animal.
“Tell me what this is all about,” I said.
He sputtered but something less than words came out.
I kept myself from punching him, barely. “Fine. You can tell it to the cops,” I said.
“No.”
“Then tell it to me. What did you mean when David Stone stood up at his breakfast table and you said ‘Not yet’? Did you mean you’re going to shoot him later? Not yet, but soon? Did you mean something else?”
He stared at the windshield and looked like he was building energy to talk. He wasn’t.
“Tell me,” I yelled.
“Tired—” he said.
“Yeah, right, tired—me too.” Then I brushed him away. “There’s nothing I can do for you.”
He looked at me, his eyes glazed with pain and grief and exhaustion, his face grislier than the faces of the dead priest and dead nun. He looked like he was about to plead with me for something no one could give him—a new life, a fresh start. Then he did it. He said, “Let—ne—go.”
I laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. Let you go? What happens then? You going to stumble down the highway until you get to the Stones’ house? You going to stand on the shoulder with your gruesome face until a Good Samaritan stops and gives you a ride? Let’s say by some miracle you manage to get to the house, what then? What could you possibly do that would make any difference?”
None of that changed his expression. “Let—ne—go,” he repeated.
I shifted the car into drive. “No,” I said.
THE STREET OUTSIDE THE District Thirteen station was lined with cop cars and a couple of news vans. The sky was bright, cold, and clear. The sun, glinting off the car polish and the pavement, threatened to make the morning happy. I parked behind a cruiser, untied Samuelson’s feet, and marched him into the station. A couple of reporters were talking with tired-eyed video-cam operators who sat on the floor, backs against the wall. A heavy-set woman cop sat at the front desk. Four other uniformed cops were chatting by a soda machine. As we walked in, they glanced at us, did a double take, and surrounded us like I’d stepped onto a dock with the prize-winning fish.
I kept moving. “Detective Fleming?” I said to the woman at the desk.
She stood, flustered, and dialed the telephone, spoke into it, then came from behind her desk and showed us through a door that looked like more than one unruly prisoner had bounced against it. Stan Fleming jogged down the hall toward us, met us halfway. He grinned. “If it isn’t Duane ‘Dog’ the bounty hunter and his half-faced quarry.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to pay me for him.”
He looked at me top to bottom. “You look like hell.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and feel like it.”
He tipped his head toward some doors at the end of the hall. “Come on.” He took Samuelson by the wrists and tugged him along.
“Co—deine?” Samuelson pleaded as he stumbled down the hall.
“You’re going to hear a lot of that,” I said to Stan.
He stopped and got close to Samuelson. “You hurting?”
Samuelson nodded.
Stan said, “I’m sorry to inconvenience you, Mr. Samuelson, but we don’t keep any painkillers in the station.” There was real pleasure in his voice.
He took Samuelson to an interview room and left him there shackled to a steel table. We stepped into his office. On his desk he had a picture of a woman who, I noticed, wasn’t Corrine. Other than the picture, he kept a lot of stacks of paper on his desk.
“Okay,” he said. “Spill it.”
TWENTY-TWO
I TOLD HIM A lot of it. I told him about Samuelson’s call and about going to my office and having Samuelson hit me up for cash. I admitted to the Xanax and Samuelson rolling me for my gun and my money. I told him that dirty money seemed to be a common theme since Judy Terrano apparently had played loose with $190,000 a few years back. Stan nodded like he knew about the scandal. I told him that I’d grilled Samuelson about Judy Terrano, and Samuelson had given me nothing but tears, lies, and moans. I saw no reason to do the Stones any favors, no reason to help them pay the mortgage on their mansion and
swimming pool, but I left out everything that happened west of the city. I said I’d tracked down Samuelson’s wife early this morning and found him with her, which was close enough to the truth that I could live with it.
Stan took it all in, then looked at his watch. “It’s five of nine. What happened between three and now?”
I shrugged. “Time slipped away. You know how it is.”
His cheer fell from his face. “I’ve got no idea how it is. Tell me.”
“Nothing to tell,” I said.
“And you didn’t call me when you first heard from Samuelson. Why?”
An honest answer probably would have included a long discussion about Corrine and maybe a short one about his promotion to lead detective in the Chicago Police Department while I was terminated without benefits. So I shrugged.
He drummed his fingers on his desktop, then made a decision. “Are we going to find any more dead nuns or priests?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Any other bodies that mysteriously died during the night?”
“I don’t think so.”
He drummed his fingers some more. He looked at me like I deserved no more sympathy than Samuelson. “Okay,” he said.
“Okay?”
“For now.”
I watched through a one-way mirror as he went to talk to Samuelson. But as I expected, Samuelson wasn’t talking. Stan raised his hand and threatened to hit his face and Samuelson shrunk away, but Stan didn’t hit him and Samuelson soon learned the trick. After twenty minutes Stan came out without hearing a word, not even another request for codeine.
Stan sat in the chair next to mine and watched Samuelson through the viewing glass. “We’re going to need to get him back to the hospital,” he said. “Don’t want him dying in the station house.”
“Seems like a smart move,” I said. “You mind if I go home?”
“You’re not going to tell me where he was all night?”
“Are you charging him?” I said.
“Yeah, for burning the car,” he said. “We don’t have enough for the nun or the priest yet.”
“Then last night is confidential. For now.”
He shrugged and waved at the door. “Get the hell out of here.” He was tired of me. I understood why. I was tired of myself.
I went out a back door at 9:30. If I headed straight home I would get there by Corrine’s ten o’clock deadline. I could even stop for a take-out coffee and bagel. If I swung by my office, I would be a half hour late.
I dialed my home number on my cell phone. After three rings Corrine picked up.
I said, “Jason’s a great kid, isn’t he?”
She thought about that a moment. “Yeah,” she said. “How much longer?”
“Another hour?”
She growled, “Joe!”
“Forty-five minutes?”
“This is what I hate about you.”
“I know.”
“Then why do you do it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “People keep dying. I don’t want them to. It happens.”
She laughed. I didn’t know if that was good or bad or if she was laughing with me or at me. So I laughed, too, and said, “I’ll be there soon.”
I DROVE DOWNTOWN TO my office, parked, and went into Grandma’s Kitchen and ordered the three-egg breakfast special to go. Alexandros looked hard at my face and my hair, matted with blood from Robert and Jarik. He leaned over the counter and beckoned me close. “You know my cousin, the one that wants a date with you?”
I nodded.
He shook his head. “She changed her mind.”
I took the breakfast up to my office, put my five thousand dollars back in a drawer, turned on my computer, glanced at the red light blinking on the answering machine, and ripped open the bags containing my food. I ate my scrambled eggs, toast, and sausage while the computer warmed up. I tickled the computer mouse and brought up Google, then stepped out of my office to the restroom across the hall. I ran water over my face and arms and shampooed the dried blood from my hair with soap from the dispenser. When I was done, the face that stared back at me from the mirror needed a good night’s sleep, a three-week vacation, and a month in a woman’s arms, but other than that it looked fine.
In my office, I sat and thought. I needed to know more about the Stones and their business. I Googled LCR and Lakeview Commercial and Residential Real Estate Development, and got twelve hundred hits. I sighed, pushed back my chair, looked at the screen, and thought about other terms I could add to narrow the search. Judy Terrano or William DuBuclet might be interesting. Eric Stone or David Stone would make sense. So would their mother’s name, Dorothy Stone. I wondered what would happen if I typed the name of David Stone’s daughter, Cassie, and added bikini.
I was too tired for this. I needed to go home and sleep, and I needed to let Corrine get to work. When I woke, I could play computer games all I liked.
I put on my jacket. But as I closed my office door behind me, the red answering machine light winked at me. I stepped back inside and hit the Play button.
Jarik spoke with a calm, quiet voice but it had danger in it. “Hey, Mr. Kozmarski,” he said. “We picked up your girlfriend when she left your house last night. A little girl named Lucinda. She’s doing fine, just fine, chilling with me and Robert. But she’s missing you. And Robert and me, we are, too. We’re all missing you. We’ll be calling you soon, all right?”
The message ended. He left no phone number. He left nothing but the vague threat. They had Lucinda. And I no longer felt tired. I felt angry and cold.
TWENTY-THREE
I SPED SOUTH OUT of the Loop. The Dan Ryan Expressway had enough lanes to land a jet, and I used them all. On the side of the highway, the shell of Sox Park was dead and would be until the spring, the players flown south for the winter. Brown low-rise apartments and warehouses always would look abandoned, no matter how much life was in them.
I exited and shot through the streets of Beverly until I reached William DuBuclet’s brick house. The lights were off but I pounded on the front door anyway, rattled the doorknob, and pounded some more. I was reaching for my gun, figuring the butt against the wooden door would get the attention of anyone in the house and probably the neighbors’ houses, too, when the woman who had answered the door the last time I’d been there opened it again and peered at me from sad, drooping eyes. “Yeesss?” she said, like she’d never seen me before.
“I need to see William DuBuclet.” I started inside without an invitation.
She stood her ground and shook her head half a shake. “Mr. DuBuclet’s not available,” she said slowly.
I could knock her over. “He’ll want to see me. It’s about Jarik and Robert.”
She stared at my mouth like I might have something more to say. I didn’t. “Very well,” she said, and she turned from the door. She led me up the hall to DuBuclet’s office, knocked on the door, and cracked it open. “Joseph Kozmarski is here to see you,” she said.
“Let him in,” said DuBuclet.
He sat at his desk, reading a book bound in cracking black leather. His tall, dull-eyed, dully smiling grandson sat across the room from him in a wheelchair. Last time, the grandson had worn striped pants and a striped shirt and had clapped silently. He still clapped silently, though now he wore jeans and a sweatshirt.
DuBuclet opened the top drawer of the desk and slid the book into it. A stick of cedar incense burned on a metal tray in front of him. He motioned to a chair facing his.
“I’ve been following the news on TV and the radio,” he said. “I understand that Greg Samuelson is back in custody.”
I waved that away. “Robert and Jarik have my partner, Lucinda Juarez.”
He looked at me, perplexed.
“Don’t give me that look. They do what you tell them to do.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not entirely true. Please explain what happened.”
I said, “Last night they
paid me a visit.” He nodded like he knew that much. “They took me for a ride and told me again that they wanted me to stop investigating Judy Terrano’s death. They’d found out I’d agreed to help the cops, and they didn’t like that.” DuBuclet frowned. He already knew about the cops and didn’t like it either. “They said your interest in Judy Terrano was personal, a deep dark secret from an earlier life. They didn’t like me digging into that. Jarik clubbed me on the head to make the message stick. Then I clubbed him and Robert to let them know I didn’t appreciate that kind of reminder. Later, to remind me again, I suppose, they grabbed my partner as she left my house.”
“I wasn’t aware of that part of it,” he said.
“They still have her. I don’t like this kind of reminder either.”
He put two fingers to his lips. “Are you planning to grab me to make the point?”
“The idea crossed my mind.”
He looked down and shook his head. “Don’t ever go into business with the people you love,” he said.
“That’s the second time in two days I’ve heard that.”
“It’s good advice.”
I thought about what Lucinda had found in the files about DuBuclet’s son, dead in a police raid. “How about Anthony? Was he in the family business?”
He flinched. “What do you know about my son?”
“Just that he got killed about forty years ago. And afterward, you changed your heart about the best ways to fight.”
Fatigue seemed to weigh him down, the fatigue of a man who was pushing hard toward a hundred years old, the kind of fatigue that might stop an old man’s heart. “It was 1969,” he said. “December 4. Three days before Pearl Harbor Day. My boy was sleeping with some friends in an apartment on Fifty-ninth Street. If you want the truth, they had a gun, just one, and about a dozen lightbulbs and some kerosene. You can break the neck off a bulb, fill it with kerosene, and you’ve got a handy, little Molotov cocktail. They weren’t innocent. None of us were. I’ll never pretend we were.
The Bad Kitty Lounge Page 11