“And say what?” I was out of my depth here.
“Tell him to use a lot of kindness. She’s going to need the men in her life as much if not more than the women. Judgmental angry men won’t help.”
Judgmental. Angry. Could’ve described me at that moment.
“What are we supposed to be, Marvella?” I asked, not looking at her.
“With Lacey? Kindness itself. I don’t care what you do to the animal who hurt her.”
Marvella probably did care. She probably expected me to hurt the bastard, to make him stop. I doubted she expected me to kill him.
Although she did know what I did to a man who had attacked her cousin Valentina. Or maybe Marvella just thought she knew.
“You need to eat something,” she said, nodding toward the pizza. “You can’t just sit here and drink.”
If I were alone, I could. If I didn’t have Jimmy to watch over, and a wealth of obligations. Back in Memphis, on my own, in my own house, I could have spent the next three days drinking.
I tilted my head back. I hadn’t let memories of Memphis slip in—not favorable memories anyway—for nearly two years.
I slid the plate toward me and grabbed a slice. The pizza was still warm. Marvella had probably heated it too much in the oven. I took a bite. Sure enough, the crust was hard and the tomato sauce had burned against it.
I didn’t care. I made myself finish.
Then I picked up the Scotch and poured it back into the bottle.
“Thank you for taking care of Jimmy,” I said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
She stood. She knew she was being dismissed. “He’s an amazing kid.”
“I know,” I said.
“He tried not to have a reaction tonight, but he didn’t want to go to sleep until you got home.”
“I understand,” I said, and I did. He was worried for me. He knew I had gone after the man who hurt Lacey, a man who had looked large and threatening to nearly twelve-year-old Jimmy.
“He’ll probably check on you if he wakes up during the night,” she said.
She had noticed my startled reactions. She clearly didn’t want me to overreact if Jimmy startled me as well.
“I know,” I said.
“It sounds like he had a hell of a childhood,” she said.
I frowned at her. “He told you about it?”
“He said his mother was a prostitute. Then he got all upset that he had mentioned it. What’s that about, Bill?”
I swallowed, decided half the truth was better than the whole truth. “I didn’t know about Jimmy for the first seven or eight years of his life.”
“Oh,” she said, and she looked vaguely disappointed. As if I had slept with a prostitute. Or worse, impregnated a woman and didn’t take care of her, so she had to become a prostitute.
I capped the bottle and returned it to the top shelf.
“There’s more to the story, isn’t there, Bill?” Marvella asked. I couldn’t tell with my back to her: Was there a bit of a pleading tone in her voice?
“There always is,” I said as I turned around. “You know that. There always is.”
ELEVEN
MARVELLA LEFT shortly afterward. She wanted to help with the dishes. I told her she had done enough. I almost offered to pay her, but felt it wrong in light of our conversation.
I would go to her apartment in the morning and see how much I owed her for the pizza. Or see if I could figure out another way to compensate her for her time.
It just felt wrong on this night.
Everything felt wrong on this night.
I pulled the rest of the pizza out of the oven and shut it off. Then I put the pizza, uncovered, into the refrigerator. I got a glass of tap water and walked into the living room.
The local news was on. WLS and its stupid happy talk format did not match my mood. I stalked the television set and grabbed the dial, clicking away from Bill Frink’s discussion of the upcoming Super Bowl. I went to NBC instead. I couldn’t quite bear to shut off the television, and I knew I could stomach The Tonight Show better than I could handle the inanity on the other channels.
If I only could survive the newscasts.
Part of me worried that Voss’s death would be on the local news and that I had already missed the coverage. Part of me knew that he wouldn’t be found for days, maybe weeks. By then, he’d be an afterthought, and no one would connect today’s incident with his killing.
I sank into the couch. WMAQ’s sportscaster Johnny Morris was going on and on about the Viking’s chances against the Chiefs on the weekend. Morris, who used to play for the Bears, acted as if he actually cared about this stuff. Maybe he did.
I closed my eyes, saw the flash of the gunshot, and opened them again. I swirled the water in my glass, and thought of the Scotch.
It wasn’t an answer, but it felt like one.
In order to live here, I had to close my eyes to so much. The Blackstone Rangers gang operated right near that school. I had threatened them last year, and they actually took me seriously. They considered me too dangerous to take on, which made Jimmy and the Grimshaw children off limits.
I had thought that was enough.
I hadn’t even looked at the Starlite. It hadn’t even crossed my mind.
We drove the kids to school, walked them into the building, protected them coming and going.
I never expected them to go off on their own, like Lacey had. Even though I should have. When Jimmy warned me about her clothing, about her attitude, I thought it was inside the school itself, not in the schoolyard.
Not near that damn hotel.
How do you know it was instead of?
I had assumed. I was even assuming tonight. First, I figured that getting rid of Voss would solve most of the problem, figured he was operating alone or with a few friends out of the Starlite. Or maybe he had used the Starlite as an occasional base.
I’d been so furious, I hadn’t been able to control my hand. I had shot Voss before I had asked the right questions.
Us.
Dammit.
I stood up as the familiar Tonight Show theme music started. I paced around the living room.
I would have to work. I needed the money, especially now. But I also needed to track this down. I had to balance it all.
And I had to figure out how to protect the kids better at school.
I understood Franklin’s reaction. I wanted to take those kids and wrap them in tissue, hide them in a closet somewhere, and remove them when they were grown.
We had set up an after-school program to keep them off the streets during the workday. I was tempted to ask the after-school program’s teacher, Mrs. Armitage, if she would work days as well, just teach the kids instead of sending them to school.
But there was the whole problem of accreditation, and money. It always came down to money.
And I knew, maybe better than most, if kids wanted to get into trouble, they could do it from a private program as easily as they could from a public one.
Besides, I didn’t know who else was threatened. That entire school was next to the Starlite. There were the gangs, and now this threat. Or there had always been this threat.
It had just become visible to me.
I would have to talk with the principal, let him know about the problem, see if something could be done. I also needed to figure out what I could do.
I wanted that hotel gone, its sleazy clientele in jail, off the streets, away from the children.
I was going to scout the entire neighborhood and see what else lurked there.
Which was something I should have done a long time ago.
TWELVE
THE PHONE RANG, startling me out of a sound sleep. My neck ached and my left arm was asleep. Jimmy stirred against me.
We were on the couch, illuminated by static. The television was still on, but broadcasting nothing. I glanced over my shoulder at the clock in the kitchen. Five a.m. on the dot.
The pho
ne rang again.
“Wha—?” Jimmy asked, rubbing his face.
I squinched away from him and eased him onto the couch. “Go back to sleep,” I said. “I’ll get this.”
If the phone rang at 5 a.m., it couldn’t be good.
I made my way to my office, staggering in the early morning darkness. Sleeping on the couch made my body ache.
I didn’t remember Jimmy joining me, but he must have awoken in the middle of the night and come looking for me. He had clearly brought a blanket with him, because we had been covered up.
I reached the phone on my desk before whoever was on the line hung up.
“Yeah, hello,” I said, not quite capable of automatic civility this early in the morning.
“I’m sorry, Smokey, I know it’s early, but I waited as long as I could.”
I blinked and rubbed my face before the voice clicked. It belonged to Franklin.
“Lacey?” I almost added Is she all right? but the answer to that question would be no, even if nothing happened overnight.
“I’m only peripherally calling about her. I couldn’t sleep.” He didn’t sound tired. He sounded determined. “Listen, I wanted to let you know I’m driving the kids today.”
I reached across the desk and turned on my desk lamp. The lighting from the window was poor in the middle of a summer afternoon. On a predawn January morning, this room was as dark as a tomb.
The pool of light revealed files I’d ignored for more than a month, and my 1969 desk blotter with December’s calendar on top. The 1970 desk blotter was beneath, unopened. I truly hadn’t been in this room except to grab something fast for weeks.
“It’s my turn, isn’t it?” I asked. I had driven the kids two days before. We switched days.
“I’m talking to the principal,” Franklin said. “He needs to know about the Starlite. He needs to know how dangerous it is.”
We had come to the same conclusion overnight, but now I had to ask him the same question I’d been asking myself. “What do you want him to do about it? Lock the kids inside the school?”
“One step at a time, Smokey,” Franklin said, sounding like the man I used to know. “The principal has to know there’s a problem before finding a solution. I figure he’s going to have to deal with the school board and the zoning committee on this one. Which reminds me—”
He broke off. I heard a voice behind him, then rustling.
“Smokey, it’s Althea.” She sounded wide awake as well. “I just need to know: Is it safe to send my babies to school this morning?”
I had no idea how to answer that. “Um—”
“We talked about something last night,” she said. “I’m worried about Keith. Do I need to be?”
“Oh.” I finally understood. “Yes, it’s okay to send him to school. He and Jimmy are in no danger today. No one will come after them for that beating yesterday.”
“You’re certain?” Althea asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“And what can I tell Lacey?” She sounded so prim. Amazing how a woman could sound so prim and so fierce at the same time.
“Tell her that man won’t harm her again.”
“You can guarantee it?”
“I can.” I was awake now, even though my eyes were still gummy.
“Thank you,” Althea said, and the phone rustled as she handed it back to Franklin.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“You had something else to tell me,” I said, not willing to answer his question at all.
“Oh, yes.” His response showed how tired he was. Normally, I couldn’t have distracted him that easily. “I was wondering if you would set up a meeting with me and Laura Hathaway.”
I frowned. I hadn’t expected that. Franklin and Laura knew each other, but they weren’t close. Laura had helped Franklin and Althea move to the house they were currently in by lowering the rent and not charging a deposit, but she hadn’t really interacted with them much since then.
“What do you want to talk with Laura about?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as suspicious as I felt. Franklin had been up all night, angry and stewing. He might have come up with something that wouldn’t be good for anyone.
“I figure with her work at Sturdy Investments, she might have some sway with the zoning commission,” he said.
I let out a small laugh. “Not if her recent battles are any indication.” She had been talking all winter about going to court over a zoning problem near Pullman.
“Still,” Franklin said, “she can tell me about the personalities, who to talk to, maybe help me with the politics of all of this.”
I frowned. Franklin was pretty savvy about Chicago politics all on his own, particularly the politics of the South Side. “Is that all you want to talk with her about?”
“No,” he said, and then he paused. “Jimmy said—a while back, he said that—you know he wants to go to Yale.”
“Yes,” I said.
I had taken him to Yale over the summer while I was on a case that had brought us both to the East Coast. I had hated the snobbish attitudes of Yale. Jimmy had seen castles where I saw exclusion. He had focused with an incredible intensity on getting into Yale. He had redoubled his efforts at school ever since then, and I hadn’t discouraged him in the least. If, six years from now, he still wanted to go to the Ivy League, I would do everything I could to pay for that education.
“He said that Laura Hathaway had offered to pay for his private school tuition. He also said you turned her down.”
I had, but that was before the Yale discussion. It was last year, when we had first moved here. When I helped Franklin start the after-school program.
I almost corrected him, and then decided it didn’t matter. I needed to hear him out.
“I’ve been thinking about Lacey. She can’t go back to that school.” And now Franklin’s voice shook. “She needs a new start where no one knows what happened.”
“No one knows now, Franklin,” I said gently. “Just the family, and we’re not going to say anything.”
“I need to tell the principal,” he said, and in his voice I could hear echoes of a conversation he’d had all night with Althea.
“Why don’t you let me talk to him?” I said. “He’ll understand—”
“No,” Franklin said. “No offense, Smokey, but I have some clout in this community. He’ll listen to me.”
I sighed. Franklin was right. Besides, he was talking about a legal battle. He wasn’t the kind of man who had stomach for the battles I fought, and I often didn’t have the patience for the battles he fought.
“Okay,” I said, not wanting to argue with him. “You want Laura to help you find the right school?”
“Yeah.” But there was something else in his tone, something he wasn’t telling me. “And maybe—do you think—she’d be willing to make a loan? Just something short term? I don’t take charity.”
“I know that,” I said. “Do you want me to talk with her?”
“I need to do this,” Franklin said. “But if you wouldn’t mind feeling her out on this…?”
“I don’t mind,” I said. I had to talk with her anyway. I didn’t want Jimmy to tell her what had happened last night before I did.
“Thank you,” Franklin said.
“You want me to pick the kids up?” I asked. “You’ll probably want to be at the hospital.”
Franklin let out a small sigh. “I don’t know what I want. Althea thinks I’m not going to help Lacey, that I’ll make things worse. But goddamn it, Smokey, she’s my little girl.”
“I know,” I said.
“And I can’t fix this,” he said.
“I know that too,” I said. “We just have to get through it. All of us. Together.”
“Easy for you to say,” Franklin snapped. “You have a boy. I don’t want to let my girls out of the house. Althea’s making me. She says we need to have a normal day.”
“The other kids—what did you tell them?” I asked.
<
br /> “That some guy hurt Lacey and Jimmy and Keith stopped him. We didn’t say anything else. Keith’s not supposed to say much more than that. I don’t know if he will. Jonathan’s pretty suspicious, and pretty mad they didn’t tell him.”
Jonathan was Lacey’s older brother.
“Yeah,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to add.
“I don’t know how we’re going to have a normal day,” Franklin was saying. “I don’t think we’ll have a normal day ever again.”
He would be surprised at how normal crept up, even after extraordinary events. But I didn’t tell him that. I couldn’t.
“You didn’t answer me,” I said gently. “Let me pick them up from school.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “You get them home safely, though.”
“I will,” I said. “I promise.”
THIRTEEN
I ALMOST PICKED UP the phone to call Laura, then realized how early it was. Laura liked to sleep until the very last minute, and hated being awakened for any reason.
In December, we had agreed not to see each other during the week unless it was a special occasion. Laura was running a major company, and I often worked odd hours. We tried to spend at least one weekend day together, but even that was hard. Laura had a conference all this weekend, and wasn’t even sure if she could get away for Jimmy’s birthday party.
Which I had forgotten until now. I suspected the Grimshaws wouldn’t be in a party mood this weekend. Jimmy’s birthday was on the 15th, so we could postpone the party one week, and maybe not make it a surprise.
I went through my morning routine quietly so that I didn’t wake Jimmy. He still had fifteen minutes to sleep and considering how restless he had clearly been the night before, I figured he needed it.
For once, I had time to make us a real breakfast. I even had eggs and bacon and bread so that the idea of a real breakfast wasn’t a wish, it was something I could actually do.
Bacon was sizzling when Jimmy finally woke up. As he staggered into the kitchen, the television—which I had forgotten—sprang to life.
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