Street Justice: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Nelscott, Kris

  “I asked you to make sure this man would not harm my daughter again. You have reassured both of us that he will not. We believe you. Case closed.”

  Lacey had paled, her bruises standing out in sharp relief.

  I couldn’t say anything, not about the school, not about the other girls. I didn’t dare, because on some level, Althea was right: Lacey didn’t need to think about what might be out there. She knew. And she didn’t need to imagine more bad things happening to other girls.

  “I wanted to help him, Mom,” Lacey said. “He says there might be other girls.”

  “There might be,” Althea said to me, not to Lacey. “That’s not my concern. My concern is my daughter. We’re going to take care of her and our family. Franklin is already lining up ways to take care of our children so that they don’t have to face anything like this again. You might be advised to do the same, Smokey.”

  “I am,” I said, knowing she was referring to Franklin’s upcoming talk with Laura.

  “We are not going to tilt at windmills,” Althea said. “We are not going to bring any more attention on this family. Is that clear?”

  It was. She had a hunch how deep this went, and she didn’t want any part of it.

  Which was smart.

  “But the other girls…?” Lacey asked. She was looking at me.

  I smiled at her as reassuringly as I could. “I don’t know if you heard Jimmy talk about the police officer we know. Now that I’ve talked to you, I can give him all of this information. He’ll make sure the police will do everything they can to help anyone who had a run-in with that man.”

  “Promise?” Lacey asked.

  “I promise,” I said, lying again. Son of a bitch.

  I grabbed my parka and put it on.

  “Will you need help getting her home?” I asked.

  “If she’s going, and no, thank you.” Althea came farther into the room and put a hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, Smokey. I know how much you’ve done for us in the last few days. I don’t mean to yell.”

  “You’re not yelling.” I bussed her cheek. “You’re right.”

  She leaned her head against my shoulder for just a moment. Then she straightened.

  “When God put us on this earth,” she said, “he made sure that we always moved forward. I try to keep that in mind by not dwelling on what’s behind.”

  I wished it were that easy. My gaze met Lacey’s. She looked down. I bet she wished it were easy too.

  THIRTY-TWO

  AFTER I LEFT THE HOSPITAL, I realized I had forgotten to ask if I should pick up the kids. Franklin had said he would do it, and I had to trust that he was going to. Otherwise Althea would have told me.

  It looked like they had divided up family duties. Althea kept Franklin from her daughter as much as possible by taking care of the hospital matters. It prevented Franklin from saying the wrong things while Lacey was healing.

  I hoped I hadn’t said the wrong things either.

  Before I got into my van, I stuck my gloved hands into my pockets and walked toward the hospital’s charity shop. It was across the parking lot, near a diner that the hospital recommended for families.

  The diner looked like a way station on the way to hell. The charity shop didn’t look much better.

  It was stand-alone river-brick building that looked like someone had hastily assembled it in the 1930s and hadn’t done anything to it since. The windows had condensation on the inside, but that hadn’t stopped an employee from putting items on display near it. Those items were visibly faded, even through the grime.

  I pushed the door open and winced at the stench of mildew and cigarettes. I stepped into what felt like a sauna. I appeared to be the only customer.

  In fact, I appeared to be the only person alive in the entire place. No one greeted me. A cup of coffee, a film floating on its surface, sat next to the ancient cash register. The fluorescent lights hummed and one of them flickered. I took a deep breath, and regretted it.

  I yelled a tentative hello. When I got no answer, I walked over to a rack of men’s coats. Most of them were too small for me. They were all tattered and priced higher than they should have been, even in a store that donated most of its proceeds to the hospital’s charity fund. The information about the donations was displayed prominently on printed signs hanging on the dingy white walls.

  I found one coat shoved underneath several others in a pile behind the rack. It was black and it was wool. I pulled it out. The scent of mothballs came with it.

  I shook it out, and dust rose. Then I held it up. It was a greatcoat of uncertain lineage. It was long enough for me, and wide enough on the shoulders. The shoulders held the memory of some kind of military bars that had clearly been removed. The buttons were brass and covered with an insignia that I didn’t recognize, a crown and some kind of bird. The crown made me realize that the coat’s origin was not American.

  The interior was satin. I slipped it on, and instantly gained ten pounds. I had never worn such a heavy coat. But its pockets were deep, and it would keep me warm.

  That was what I needed. I didn’t plan to keep this coat for long.

  Someone had put a $20 price on it with masking tape. I did not want to spend that kind of money on this. I slipped the coat over my arm and looked around the back.

  A stout woman sat at a desk covered in magazines and papers. She was smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone.

  I waved at her, then pointed at the coat. “I’d like to buy this,” I mouthed.

  She put her hand over the receiver and said in a cigarette-ruined voice, “Leave the money on the counter.”

  “The coat’s a little pricey,” I said aloud.

  “Then don’t take it,” she said. “See what I care.”

  I let out a small sigh and walked back to the counter, pulling a twenty out as I walked. I didn’t have a lot of cash. I had forgotten to get some at the bank when I picked up the gun.

  I lifted the coffee cup, set the twenty down, and put the cup over it. Then I carried the coat out of the shop.

  The coat brought the odor of the shop with it. Because I couldn’t wash wool, I would have to live with that smell as long as I had the coat. I didn’t plan on having it dry-cleaned.

  I opened the back of the van and put the coat on some cardboard I’d left after I transported open cans of paint. Maybe some of the paint chips would flake off on it and decrease the smell. Maybe Jimmy and I would suddenly come into millions of dollars as well.

  I shook my head. Too bad about the odor. If the coat had smelled better, I would have put it aside as my good coat and worn the parka for the next few days. I really wasn’t fond of the green.

  I closed the back door, then got into the van and drove back home. I needed to talk to Marvella before I did anything else.

  For the first time in more than a year, I felt very alone. I hadn’t realized how much I relied on the Grimshaws. If I needed someone to watch Jimmy for a few hours, I called Althea. She complained about it sometimes, but she always kept him at their house, always fed him, and sometimes let him sleep over. He used to wear Keith’s clothes to school on those days, but now their growth patterns differed, I had dropped off a few changes of clothing for Jimmy.

  Before this incident, Althea offered to loan me some of the clothes Jonathan had grown out of, as if Jimmy were one of her own. We both knew he would be in his next set of clothes for only a year or maybe even a few months. He had started into that painful growth spurt so many boys went through, and it would be costly.

  I gripped the steering wheel tighter as I turned the van into my neighborhood. That twenty had been painful. Maybe I should listen to Althea and just give up on this. I did need to focus on bringing in money. This last week had proven that to me.

  But I kept thinking of Donna Loring and how vibrant she had sounded, back at the school. How she had lost everything long before she died.

  The same thing could have happened to Lacey.

  The same thi
ng was happening to other girls right now.

  I had to prevent even more from getting taken from that school. Even though Voss was gone, his legacy would live on, and Eddie Turner, or whoever ran his operation, would just find someone to take his place.

  And, I could hear Sinkovich say, if I got that hotel shut down, the operation would simply move to a different neighborhood and more girls would get lost.

  I was fighting a war that I couldn’t win alone.

  But I could win a few battles, and maybe cause enough pain to make the operation too costly to continue in the Black Belt.

  I needed to find a way to get rid of the hotel and discredit Eddie Turner, not just with the society set, but with the Outfit as well.

  And then I needed to make it seem impossible for the Outfit to try this again on the South Side.

  I pulled into my usual parking spot and sat for a moment. The neighborhood was quiet, like it usually was in the early afternoon. No cars on the slick street, no one on the sidewalks. Some window curtains were open in some of the buildings, but no one had lights on, and lights were necessary on days like today. There wasn’t enough sun to penetrate the interior gloom.

  I shut off the van.

  My biggest problem was a lack of backup. Not just with Jimmy, but also to take care of that hotel and Eddie Turner. I couldn’t do it alone, which would have been my preference. Sinkovich couldn’t help me; he’d already done as much as he could. Malcolm Reyner, who had helped me for most of last year, had been drafted and shipped off to Vietnam.

  I pulled out the keys and let myself out of the van.

  I couldn’t use Franklin or Jonathan. Even if they had experience in matters like this, they would be too emotionally involved. Hell, I was too emotionally involved. I did my best to remain calm, although my trigger finger hadn’t.

  I let myself out of the van, grabbed the coat from the back, and headed into the apartment. I needed muscle, and I didn’t have any. I had no one to rely on, no one to even ask.

  I could go to Tim Minton, I supposed. He knew a lot of people. But I didn’t want him to ask questions, use my name, and associate me in any way with that hotel.

  He finished that death house alone. He was as broken up about it all as I was. But he couldn’t help me here. He never was a fighter. He still had injuries from last fall. His cheekbone hadn’t quite healed properly, although the doctors had been able to save his eye.

  I didn’t ever want to put him in a situation where he faced violence again.

  The inside of the apartment building was hot. Something had changed with the radiator system, and probably not for the good, at least in my apartment.

  I took the stairs two at a time and knocked on Marvella’s door. This time, she answered it.

  “Bill?” she said.

  “I have a couple of questions for you,” I said.

  “Yes, I can watch Jim tonight,” she said, “if you tell me how Lacey is.”

  “They still haven’t called you?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry about it.” She stepped back and let me into her apartment. It smelled of her sandalwood perfume. “I’ll contact Althea if I have to. She won’t be able to say no to me. Right now, though, I think they’re just worried about healing.”

  Marvella’s apartment had the same layout as mine, but that was the only similarity. She had a matching sofa and loveseat set, covered with blankets made in some tribal region in Africa. Beautiful wood sculptures of black faces sat on mahogany tables. The sculptures looked like Marvella herself, even though they weren’t. They just emphasized how strikingly beautiful she was.

  A bay window overlooked the back yard. A window seat covered with brown, red, and orange pillows looked a bit mussed up. An overturned book half-hid among the spider plants trailing from the window to the floor, as if Marvella had set the book down when she had come to answer the door.

  “Lacey might get out tonight,” I said.

  “All right,” Marvella said. “I’ll call tomorrow.”

  She wandered into the spotless half-kitchen and opened the fridge. “You want anything to drink?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t stay long.”

  “So what are your questions?” she asked.

  “That organization you want Lacey to go to, is it affiliated with anything?” I asked.

  Marvella shook her head. “We’re rather informal. Like some of the other groups I belong to.”

  One of those groups helped women find safe abortions. Even though abortions were illegal in the state of Illinois, the women knew of providers who would do the work well. Too many abortion providers here and in the other states where it was illegal accidentally killed many of the women who had gone to them for help.

  A year ago, Marvella had told me about her involvement with that group and swore me to secrecy. I hadn’t told anyone.

  “Are any of the women involved…tough-minded?” I asked.

  “What are you asking, Bill?” Marvella said as she pulled out a kitchen chair. She swept a hand toward it, inviting me to sit down.

  I remained standing. “I don’t know yet. I’m trying to figure out a few things.”

  “Tough-minded, yes,” she said. “They’ve gone into terrible places to help injured women. But able to fight? I doubt it.”

  “Okay,” I said. I had had a half-hearted idea that an army of women might not be a bad thing. But it didn’t sound like Marvella’s army was a fighting force. It was the medical unit that came in after the battle was over.

  She hadn’t sat down either. She was watching me, her head tilted to one side.

  “This is going to sound strange,” I said, “but do you think some makeup would cover this?”

  I tapped the scar on my cheek.

  She grinned. “Feeling vain, Bill?”

  I couldn’t quite bring myself to grin in return. “It makes me too recognizable.”

  “Unlike your build and general manner?” she asked, this time seriously.

  “There are a lot of big men in this world,” I said, “but not a lot associated with that school who also have a scar on the left side of their face.”

  “Why are you worried about identifying marks?” she asked.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  She sighed with obvious exasperation, pushed the kitchen chair in, and started down the narrow hallway.

  I followed her.

  She flicked on the bathroom light. It smelled even more like sandalwood in here, and like Marvella herself. The last time I had seen this room, it had been a mess with towels in the tub, and a bloody handprint on the sink as Marvella had tried to save her cousin’s life.

  Now, the room was so pristine I would have been afraid to use it for its intended purpose. A brown and orange shower curtain hid the shower. A matching rug, toilet seat cover, and a whatever-you-call-it on the back of the toilet made the room feel both decorative and claustrophobic. A basket of magazines propped the door open.

  Marvella turned on the light over the mirror, then pulled out a makeup mirror. She opened an apron that covered the area under the sink and removed bottles of makeup.

  She held them against my skin one at a time, then finally chose one.

  “First, I’m going to use a little concealer and then I’m going to put on some foundation. I’m looking for a match, otherwise you’ll have to wear some all over your face.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said. “Won’t the concealer be enough?”

  She rolled her eyes at me as if I should know better. I didn’t even know what concealer was, so how would I know about it? If it was called concealer, it should conceal right?

  “You’ll have to sit down,” she said, nodding at the commode.

  “I’m not going to hurt anything?” I asked, worried about that seat cover.

  “They’re built for people who are much bigger than you,” she said, obviously misunderstanding.

  I sat.

  She tilted my head up. “Now close your eye.”

/>   I closed both of them. I felt her fingers, feather-light on my skin. She touched that scar gently as if it still hurt. Laura had touched it like that when she first saw it as well. It had been redder then, angrier.

  Something cool touched my temple. It had a flat smell that reminded me of ChapStick. It felt like ChapStick, too, gooey and dry at the same time. She slid it all the way down the scar, then rubbed her finger over it.

  “Almost,” she said, although I think she was speaking more to me than to herself.

  “Can I see it?”

  “Sure.”

  I opened my eyes. She tilted the makeup mirror downward. The magnifying mirror showed my skin down to the pores. The scar had vanished along the top part, but along the cheek it had simply faded.

  “That’s why I thought concealer wouldn’t be enough and I was right,” she said, pushing the mirror away. “Now close your eyes again.”

  I did and felt her forefinger raise my chin. Then the slightly perfumed scent of makeup reached me. I heard liquid slosh, then something wet coated the left side of my face. Marvella used a fingertip to trace the scar again. It felt like some kind of pasty gel covered my skin.

  “Eh,” she said. “We need a real light. Come on.”

  “I can open my eyes?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, and her voice came from the hall.

  I stood, then stopped and peered in the bathroom mirror. That was my old face, the one I had lost last year. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed it.

  “Come on,” she said again, this time from the living room.

  I followed her in there. She had every light in the room on and she was standing by the bay window. In her hand, she held a compact.

  “Come here,” she said, beckoning with her right hand.

  I walked over. She was staring at me critically, as if I were a half-finished version of one of her sculptures and she was the sculptor.

  “Crouch a little, would you?” she asked.

  I did. She grabbed my chin, and tilted my head, first toward the artificial light, and then toward the window.

  “I think it works,” she said. “Take a look.”