Street Justice: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Nelscott, Kris

  Besides, I had gotten Lacey’s attacker. The asshole got what he deserved. I wouldn’t let myself regret killing him. Althea had wanted him stopped. So did I.

  So, I would wager, did Lacey.

  I could tell her with a clean conscience that he wouldn’t ever hurt her again. He wouldn’t ever hurt anyone again.

  That stopped my shaking. I was getting cold. I needed to leave, but before I did, I pulled the gun out of my pocket and removed the magazine. I put it in the glove box. Then I peeled off my scarf and set it on the seat beside me. I put the gun on the scarf and folded the scarf. I removed Voss’s wallet from my other pocket and used my gloves to wipe the thing off as carefully as I could. I removed the $200 and put it in my pocket.

  Then I set the wallet beside the scarf.

  For a moment, I debated dropping the $200 into the church’s donation box inside. But someone would remember a donation that large on a night like this. They might even remember me. Plus, I didn’t want to leave the gun unattended in my van.

  I took a deep breath, feeling a little calmer, and turned the key in the ignition. The van’s engine roared loudly. I turned on the lights, put the van in reverse, backed out of the parking space, then shifted the van into drive, left the parking lot, and turned north.

  The best thing I could do was leave the neighborhood. I drove slowly, one of the few vehicles on the icy streets, and headed toward the Loop.

  In rush hour, this drive could take anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour. At the moment, my van was one of the few vehicles on the street. Still, I made sure I didn’t speed or make any driving errors.

  I was very conscious of that gun beside me on the seat. And the wallet.

  I could do something about the wallet.

  As I approached a dark and deserted section of Canal Street at the very edge of the South Loop, I rolled down my window. The icy air hit my face with the force of a blizzard.

  With my gloved right hand, I grabbed the wallet. I shifted it to my left hand and draped my arm outside the window. Even with the gloves and thick coat, the cold bit my skin. My eyes teared up from the wind. I reached a section of neighborhood bulldozed by the city last summer, and flicked my hand, tossing the wallet on an unshoveled pile of snow. Then I brought my arm inside, rolled up the window, and kept driving as if nothing had happened.

  Ahead of me, Chicago’s downtown rose like a bad memory. I had worked down here when I first moved to the city, before I realized I wasn’t cut out to work for someone else.

  No one stood on the streets and, except for the Chicago Civic Center and the hotels on Michigan, most of the lights were off.

  Good.

  I took Wacker Drive and pulled into the parking lot closest to the LaSalle Street Bridge. It was the only bridge that I knew where the attendant in the bridge tender houses couldn’t see all parts clearly.

  I loved the LaSalle Street Bridge. It was old and elegant, with rust-colored trusses, and a protected sidewalk. The trusses interested me the most, because they were accessible. I could stand between them and remain relatively unseen from drivers passing by.

  I kept the gun wrapped in the scarf, then changed my mind. I didn’t want anyone to see me carrying anything onto the bridge. I unwrapped the gun, slipped it into my pocket, and silently cursed myself.

  I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I needed to be. My own fault, really. I had let Lacey’s assault, her injuries, and her attacker get to me. I needed to reclaim a sense of—well, not calm, exactly, because calm felt beyond me. But a sense of myself, a sense of caution, a sense of the street smarts that had helped me survive for more than forty years.

  I let myself out of the van, and stared for a moment at the huge bridge rising before me. This damn city and its corruption. All around me was evidence of the way Chicago worked.

  I had no idea who built this bridge. I knew only that it was a year or so older than I was, and had probably been put together with a combination of the graft and greatness that were Chicago’s hallmarks. The bridge was beautifully designed. And depending on how deep the graft went when the thing was built, it was either structurally perfect or structurally flawed.

  The whole city was like that. If I had been a white man and Lacey had been my niece, I would have been able to call the Chicago police and let them handle this. They might not have arrested Voss. They might have scared him out of town, maybe even killed him. But they would have resolved this.

  If I were a white man with the right connections. And those connections weren’t necessarily the connections that seemed logical. It wouldn’t matter if I had money. What I needed was clout. And right now, the clout in this city all resided with Mayor Richard J. Daley. If you didn’t have South of the Yard connections or if you weren’t valuable to him in some political way, then the cops might’ve shrugged off the news of a white girl’s rape no matter what.

  Until a few years ago, according to Franklin, there were a few black politicians with access to Daley and the right kind of clout. But not anymore.

  It was up to us to take care of our own, just like it had been in Memphis. And in Atlanta. And anywhere else, south of the Mason-Dixon line.

  The cold hadn’t numbed me. In fact, it had awakened all of my senses. I kept my hands out of my pockets and walked along the well-shoveled sidewalk.

  Once I started up to the bridge, the sidewalk wasn’t as clean. Apparently no one expected a sane person to walk across this bridge in the winter. But I wasn’t quite sane at the moment.

  Besides, dozens, maybe hundreds of people had gone before me. The snow was packed and icy, not unshoveled like it had been in Voss’s neighborhood, just not shoveled as often.

  I had to pick my way up the slight incline.

  The breeze over the Chicago River felt like the same strong wind I had gotten through my open van window. Only this time, it brought the distinctive odor of the river: damp, mildewy, and slightly foul. The Chicago River was one of the most polluted rivers in America. The city dyed the water green on St. Patrick’s Day, but the joke was that the dye was unnecessary. Some days the river actually was multicolored with all of the oil slicks covering the water’s surface.

  I reached the top of the bridge next to the ornate white bridge-tender’s house, and stood in the shelter of one of the gigantic metal trusses. I had forgotten about the streetlights. They hovered over the sidewalk at regular intervals, the bulk of their light hitting pedestrians, not the road itself.

  Still, no car had gone by in the entire time I had walked up here. I doubted many would drive by as I finished my business.

  I glanced at the river below. Ice had gathered near the edges, but the water still flowed freely. For some reason, this stupid river rarely froze. I thought it was the pollution, but Jimmy had learned in school that it had something to do with Lake Michigan. Maybe both explanations were correct.

  If I didn’t want to toss the gun, if I just wanted to drop it, I would have to go near the center of the bridge. But the metal trusses weren’t as high there, and I wouldn’t be able to blend in as easily.Still, there were pockets of darkness between the streetlights, and I headed toward one of those.

  My heart was pounding. My mouth was dry from the cold and my eyes stung. My nose had gone numb a while ago. I walked a few yards past the bridge-tender’s house. The trusses loomed to my right. To my left, an ornate chest-high railing overlooked the river. I glanced over my shoulder and saw no one on either side of me. No one in the bridge-tender’s house, no one on the road, no one walking toward me.

  I reached into my right pocket, grabbed the gun, and held it over the river. Then I let go.

  The gun fell straight down, not pinwheeling like I expected. For a moment, I thought it would land on one of the ice flows, but it didn’t. It fell between them, the splash loud in the silence of this cold Chicago night.

  I leaned for just a moment longer. Problem solved. Easier than I expected, really. Even if someone saw me entering Voss’s apartment, there would be no w
ay to tie me to the man’s death. There wouldn’t even be any way to prove I knew him.

  The wallet was gone. Jimmy was the only other person who knew I had had it. I wasn’t even sure if Jimmy had looked at Voss’s name, or if he remembered it.

  I took a deep breath of the frigid air, felt it slide, ice-cold, through my mouth, neck, and into my lungs.

  Now Jimmy and Keith were safe too. Voss could have gone after them tomorrow, searching for the little kids who had beat him up with a screwdriver, deciding to teach them a lesson. No lesson to learn, nothing to repair, nothing to fear.

  Yet my heart kept pounding as if I had been in some kind of race.

  Maybe I had been.

  A mental race.

  A race for Lacey’s life.

  A race for her future.

  And I wasn’t sure if we’d won that one yet or not.

  TEN

  I GOT HOME while Marcus Welby, M.D. was still on, not that anyone was watching it in my apartment, even though the TV blared. The window was open wide. We were heating the entire neighborhood and entertaining it as well.

  No one was in the living room. I pushed the door closed, and locked it. I walked to the television, and started when I saw black faces. Apparently, unbelievably wise Marcus Welby was talking to a black neurosurgeon about a boy who’d been beaten in a riot. That hit too close to home. I turned the TV down, but I didn’t turn it off in case someone was watching. The apartment was actually cool. I closed the window. Now that I was inside, I realized I smelled faintly of marijuana. I pulled off my coat, and looked at the bloodstains running down the front.

  It was ruined. So were my pants. My shoes had a white layer of salt and water along the edges. Ruined as well.

  I kicked them off and tossed them under the coat tree. The remains of a pizza sat on top of the stove, along with some Coke. It looked like no one had eaten much.

  I hadn’t been gone as long as I thought. I would have thought it was midnight, given how long this evening felt.

  The light was on in Jimmy’s room. I walked down the hall. Marvella sat in a chair beside his bed, an open book on her lap. Jimmy was asleep, his arms on top of the thick blanket he preferred during the winter.

  I walked inside the room, deliberately stepping on a creaky spot in the floor. Marvella started, then put a finger to her lips. She looked exhausted.

  She put a bookmark in the book, closed it, and set the book on the end table. I reached around her and turned on a nightlight that we hadn’t used in months. I hated using it now, but the fact that Jimmy had fallen asleep with the lights on was a red flag for me: We might have troubled days ahead.

  I didn’t know why that surprised me. Given all that had happened today, troubled days were the least of my worries.

  Marvella’s gaze went over me, taking in the mess, and probably a lot more. She nodded toward the hallway.

  We left the room. I shut off the overhead light, but peered in to make sure that didn’t wake Jimmy. It didn’t.

  I pulled the door halfway closed.

  “Why don’t you change?” Marvella said. “I’ll clean the kitchen and warm up the pizza.”

  I didn’t want pizza. I didn’t want anything. But I knew I had to eat.

  I thanked her, and went into my room, grabbed some comfortable clothes, and took them to the bathroom. I ran the shower on scald and climbed in.

  I would have to throw away my clothes, probably tonight. And my shoes. They were one of three pairs that I owned. I would need to replace them, my coat, my scarf, and my backup gun. Today had been extremely expensive.

  If I hadn’t wanted to work before, I certainly had to now.

  I stood under the water, wishing it could burn away the day. The evening, really. That word. Us. I hated it.

  I wasn’t done, and I knew it.

  I dried off, got dressed, and put my clothes in the paper bag we had as a garbage can liner in the bathroom. I closed up the bag and carried it to the front door. There I added my shoes. I slipped my hand into the pocket of my coat, removed the $200 and my guitar pick, then grabbed the coat and tossed it in the bag as well.

  “You’re getting rid of all of that?” Marvella asked.

  I started even though I knew she was there. “Lacey bled all over it,” I said. “It’s just better this way.”

  Marvella nodded, then pulled some glasses from the cupboard.

  I grabbed my keys and went downstairs in my slippers. I stepped outside into the cold, feeling it leach away the shower’s warmth. I unlocked the van, and tucked the paper bag in the back. I was going throw all of that stuff away in a different part of town just as a precaution. I didn’t like leaving it in the van overnight, but I didn’t see much of a choice.

  I hurried back to the apartment, shivering with cold.

  “I didn’t know you were going out,” Marvella said. “I could have done that for you and taken out some of the kitchen garbage as well.”

  I shook my head. “I needed to do it.”

  She nodded, then came over to me, a highball glass in one hand. She had poured three fingers of Scotch. I resisted the urge to down it in one gulp.

  “Long day,” she said.

  You have no idea, I thought. But I said, “How’s Lacey?”

  “She wasn’t awake when we left. I convinced Jimmy to come home. He was getting tired.” Marvella had poured herself a glass as well. She sipped it, and leaned against the couch. She had deep circles under her eyes.

  “I take it Althea and Franklin stayed with her?”

  “They were arguing with the hospital staff when I left,” Marvella said. “The staff wanted them gone at the end of visiting hours, but Althea wanted family near Lacey when she woke up. I think Althea probably won.”

  “She’s handling this better than I thought she would,” I said.

  Marvella nodded grimly. “Franklin’s the problem.”

  I frowned at her.

  She shrugged and turned her back on me. “Some pizza?”

  Pizza and Scotch. The perfect capper to a horrible day. “Why not?”

  She set two slices on a plate in my usual spot at the table. I hadn’t realized she had visited enough to know where my usual spot was.

  I sat down. My entire body ached, and if I hadn’t had such a rough day, I would have thought I was coming down with the flu.

  I took a sip of the Scotch. It burned as it went down my throat. I knew the Scotch couldn’t actually warm me, but it sure felt like it did.

  “What’s the problem with Franklin?” I asked, although I had a hunch I knew.

  “He thinks it’s all Lacey’s fault. The way she dressed, the fact that she had gone boy-crazy. The makeup. He seemed to believe that if she had just followed his instructions, she would have been fine.”

  “Would she?” I asked softly.

  Marvella glared at me. I hadn’t seen her look that fierce in almost a year. “Do you think that?”

  I let out a small sigh. “Something made that creep go after Lacey instead of the other thirteen-year-old girls in that school.”

  “How do you know it was instead of?” Marvella asked.

  The question made me freeze. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know it at all.

  “Do you have information I don’t?” I asked.

  She shook her head and sat across from me. She set her glass on the table with a thunk.

  “I just think it’s no coincidence that this scum was working out of a hotel near the school.” She swirled the glass between her palms. “He’s done this before.”

  He’s. Present tense. She had no idea what I did. She hadn’t asked either. Not that I would have told her.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “He knew what he was doing. It was easy for him. He had a system. People with systems perfect those systems over time. I don’t know if he worked the school before, but Lacey wasn’t his first victim.”

  His voice echoed in my head: They just want the girls in the righ
t shape.

  They. Girls.

  He added with a grin: Maybe I have a little fun.

  “Bill?” Marvella put her hand on mine. I jumped. She frowned. “You okay?’

  “Long day.” I slipped my hand away from hers. Then I took the tumbler of Scotch and downed it.

  Marvella watched with concern. She hadn’t seen me drink like that before. I pushed the glass aside.

  She got up and grabbed the bottle.

  I welcomed it.

  “What happens to Lacey?” I asked as I poured myself another.

  Marvella made a sound that was both sad and sympathetic at the same time. “It’s up to her now.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “I’ve already talked to Althea. There’s a group of younger women I know, survivors. They’ll help her. If she lets them.”

  I hadn’t had a drink from the new glass yet. My stomach clenched. “And if she doesn’t?”

  Marvella shook her head. “It’s her first sexual experience, Bill. It could be—”

  “It wasn’t sexual,” I said. “He attacked her.”

  Marvella gave me a withering look. “According to Jimmy, she spent time with this creep. Lunches, him treating her like gold. Telling her she’s pretty, telling her she can be a model. In the end, she got hurt, but in the beginning, she thought he was her Prince Charming.”

  “Some fucking prince,” I said, thinking of that smelly basement apartment.

  “She’s thirteen,” Marvella said. “She has no experience with men. The first one she trusted, the first one she was probably attracted to, beat her, raped her, and might’ve done worse if her cousin and her brother hadn’t saved her. How do you think that’ll resonate?”

  There was no answer to that, not one I wanted to think about anyway. I leaned my head to one side and ran my fingers over my forehead. I wasn’t tired, but I was weary. Bone weary.

  “She’s going to need her family,” Marvella said. “The group I’m taking her to will help, but she’s going to need a lot of understanding. You’re going to have to talk with her father.”