The Bad Kitty Lounge (14 page)

“It's mine,” I admitted. “Samuelson took it off me last night.”

He looked me in the eyes, suspicious. He looked at the gun. He didn't want to but he gave it to me.

I DROVE TO THE
District Thirteen police station with Samuelson in the passenger seat. Eric Stone had pulled me aside and asked if I could avoid mentioning that I'd picked up Samuelson at his mother's house. The family was about to announce the opening of Stone Tower, the luxury building that they'd been developing southwest of the Loop. News of their involvement in Judy Terrano's death could dent the sales.

“What does Samuelson want from you?” I'd said to him.

“He wants me dead. Me and Amy.”

I shook my head. “I wouldn't blame him if he did, but he ignored you. He pointed his gun at your mother. Then he shot at David—more or less.”

He frowned at that. “He shot at David because David's a fool and can't stay seated when he should. He pointed the gun at my mother, I'm guessing, because this is her house and his wife and I were in it.”

I thought about the pieces of Stone's ripped-up check on my desk. I said, “You paid me to keep an eye on William DuBuclet,
not to deal with Samuelson, but I can claim confidentiality. No guarantee, but I'll try to keep your name out of it.”

“Have you done anything about DuBuclet?”

DuBuclet's helpers had laughed at me when I'd asked if he was interested in Amy Samuelson. “I think he's under control for now,” I said.

Stone bound Samuelson's hands and feet with orange plastic twine, and his brother tied a cord from his wrists through the handle above the passenger door of my Skylark. He fashioned a gag for him but looked at Samuelson's face and thought better of it. They wrapped him like they wanted to send him securely to a faraway place.

I fished through his pockets until I found my credit cards. I checked the glove compartment of the car he'd been driving and found the five thousand dollars he'd taken from my file cabinet.

As we pulled out of the driveway my cell phone rang. It made me jump almost as high as Samuelson blowing a hole in the breakfast-room wall. The phone said the call was from my home number. I tried to shake the bad night from my voice and answered, “Good morning, Jason.”

I pictured him sitting alone in my house, next to a note that had lied to him about the dependability of adults, or at least me, and I expected a morose eleven-year-old to reply. But he gave me cheer. “Morning, Joe. I know where you are.”

I was driving through suburban streets in a town where the mayor and police chief had promised to shoot at me, sitting next to a man with half a face. “That's good because I hardly know where I am.”

“Cool,” he said, and he added with a note of mystery, “and I know who you're with.”

Samuelson moaned quietly.

“I doubt that,” I said.

Jason laughed, pleased with himself. “You like to kiss this person.”

He thought I'd snuck over to Lucinda's apartment. I glanced at Samuelson. “Nope, not this one.”

He laughed again. “I'm glad you went over there.”

I saw no reason to explain. “You getting ready for school?”

“I'm not going to school,” he said happily.

“Yes, you are,” I growled. “Eat breakfast, put on your clothes—”

“Okay.”

“And then go to school.”

“I can't.”

“You lose your shoes? Your legs stop working? You—”

“The principal suspended me for a day. For fighting Tim Naley.”

“Jason!”

“Joe?”

Samuelson moaned louder. I shook my finger to quiet him. I said to Jason, “Why didn't you tell me last night?”

“I did tell you. When you asked me about my cheek.”

“You told me you had a fight but you didn't tell me you got suspended.”

“I thought you knew we weren't allowed to fight in school.”

I gave myself a moment. “Get yourself some breakfast, okay? And get dressed. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

“Okay.”

Samuelson was leaning against the passenger door, eyes closed.

“It might be a couple hours.”

“Okay,” he said, and the pleasure of mystery returned to his voice as if he was imagining what Lucinda and I might be doing in those couple of hours. Then he added, “A man called and said it was important.”

“He leave a name?”

Jason looked for the notepad where he'd written it. “Jarik.”

DuBuclet's flunky. I figured he was nursing a headache as bad as mine this morning and that made me smile a little. “He leave a number?”

“He said he'll try you again later.”

“All right,” I said. “I'll see you in a while.”

“Okay,” he said. “Behave yourself.”

“
You
behave yourself,” I said.

He laughed and we hung up.

Samuelson moaned.

“Shut up,” I said.

He opened his eyes. “Co—deine?” he managed.

“Yeah, right, I keep a quart of it in the glove compartment.”

He gazed at the glove compartment like he wished it were true.

“Keep quiet for a minute,” I said, and I dialed Lucinda's home number. It rang four times and the answering machine picked up. “Hey, it's me,” I said. “I've got Samuelson. Long night, long story. I'm taking him to the Thirteenth. Can you do me a favor? Jason's home today. Can you swing by and check on him?”

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.”

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.