The Fifth Floor (19 page)

T hree blocks removed from the house Johnny and Janet Woods called home was a building site. I pulled up a little before midnight. The thunder was close now, and constant. Dark rain moved across the lot in cold, drenching sheets. I buttoned my coat and ducked under a couple of saw-horses that were supposed to keep the public on the sidewalk.

The site was crisscrossed with patterns of light from the street. I skirted a big hole in the middle of the lot. Bullets of rain peppered the foot or so of water that sat in the bottom. I walked to the back of the lot, to a one-story wooden building waiting for sweet release from the wrecking ball. The abandoned shack sat on wooden posts with a front porch and no front door. Underneath the porch was a crawl space, about five feet high with dirt for a floor. Taylor met me at the entrance. Her hair hung about her face and her cheeks were streaked with mud. She didn’t try to hug me. Didn’t try to talk. She just took my hand.

I ducked my head and went under the house. Janet Woods was laid up in the back. It looked like he’d been at her with a piece of steel.

“He hit you with something this time. Something more than his fists.”

Her eyes followed mine. A slight nod.

“Okay,” I said. “Can you move?”

No response. I opened the coat Taylor had wrapped her mom in. Underneath was a bathrobe and flannel nightgown, soaked wet with mud and ripped in a few spots. I leaned close and listened to her breathing. Didn’t sound good. Then I noticed the spots of blood. Bright red stuff. The kind that came straight from inside.

“Have you been spitting up blood?”

A nod.

“He hit you in the chest or the sides?”

Another nod. I leaned back into the night and took stock. I wasn’t a doctor, but I knew enough to know my client might die while I figured out what to do.

“Okay, Janet. I think you have some cracked ribs. Maybe something broken inside too. Not sure what, but that’s where the blood is coming from.”

She tried to open her eyes but seemed tired and closed them again. I let her drift and kept talking.

“I’m going to get an ambulance. Get you to a hospital.”

She was shaking her head no, eyes still closed. I ignored her.

“Have to, Janet. We’ll be discreet. No press. No charges filed. Just the hospital. Get you fixed up and then we’ll figure it all out. Okay?”

Her mouth curved into a soft smile. I moved a piece of hair off her forehead.

“Don’t worry about it. Just rest easy while I make a call.”

I walked out from under the porch. The wind had picked up, lifting the rain almost horizontal. I huddled against the side of the building and punched in Dan Masters’ number. The detective seemed to know a little bit about Johnny Woods, his wife, and the history between them. I figured he might help. Even better, he might be discreet. We talked for a minute or so. Then I headed back toward the crawl space.

“Is she going to live?”

It was Taylor, stepping out from the shadows behind the house.

“She’ll live. We just have to get her to a hospital. I called a friend. Someone you can trust.”

The girl moved toward the porch and a little shelter. She sat down on the steps and shivered. I sat down beside her.

“What happened, Taylor?”

“What do you think happened? Exactly what I said. He came home, late and drunk. I was asleep and heard the noise downstairs. She must have decided to have it out. Or something.”

I thought of my last conversation with Janet. Her plan for dealing with Johnny Woods.

“By the time I got downstairs,” Taylor said, “he was already gone. She was on the floor. I thought she was dead.”

“And you took her here?”

“I had to get her out. So, yeah, I come here sometimes. Smoke cigarettes. Stupid stuff like that.”

Taylor hugged her knees to her chest and dropped her forehead. “I thought she was dead, Mr. Kelly. I swear she was dead.”

“She’s gonna be okay, Taylor. But you have to stay with her tonight. You understand?”

The girl stared at the wooden angle of steps walking away from her and nodded. “Okay. But we have to do something.”

“We will.”

“We have to. Now. Tonight.”

I could hear the flicker of a siren and see the red shadows of an ambulance converging on the lot. Masters hadn’t wasted any time.

“You think your step-dad’s at home?” I said.

Taylor’s eyes jumped in her head. From me to the approaching shadows, her face caught in a contour of sharp and angled light.

“If he’s not there, he will be. Sooner or later.”

I stood up. The girl remained seated.

“All right, Taylor. You stay with your mom. Don’t mention me to anyone. I was never here. Okay?”

“Okay.”

I slipped behind the house, toward the back of the building site. Taylor’s voice surged from the darkness.

“Mr. Kelly?”

I stopped. The girl crept close. A final time.

“Are you going to kill him?”

I felt the gun on my hip, the cold rain in my mouth, lashing against the side of the old house. Beyond that were voices, washing in from the front of the lot, and a spray of flashlights heading our way.

“Go help your mom, Taylor. Leave the rest to me.”

And then I left the young girl and her mother. Hoping they would survive the night. Hoping I would as well.

I looked at the revolver in my hand, then down and into an expanse of palate, gums, and teeth that was the inside of Johnny Woods’ mouth. He was sitting in his kitchen, on a wooden captain’s chair, legs splayed and arms hanging to either side. His mouth was wide open to the ceiling and his eyes saw nothing as a fan blew the breeze around his head. He had three small holes, two in the chest and one at the base of the throat. Woods’ bowels had let loose after he was shot, and his pants were soiled along the inner leg. Johnny didn’t seem to care. When death came, it was all business, with neither the time nor the patience for vanity.

I pressed my fingers to the short barrel of the gun and felt a bit of warmth as it leeched from the blue steel. I tried, but could sense no human soul as it left the room. No feeling of Johnny Woods, passing into memory, passing into dust. Maybe if he was a better person-maybe if I cared-it might be different. Maybe not. Right now, the city fixer and wife beater was an inert bag of blood and guts. Decomposing as I sat there. And, if I didn’t get moving, my ticket to a life behind bars.

That last fact got my attention. That and the soft sound I heard in the distance. Police sirens. Fading, then returning. Now a bit louder. A neighbor must have heard the shots. I looked at the snub-nosed Smith and Wesson. That’s how it falls sometimes. I pocketed the gun and made my way through the house. The red fog inside my head was slowly beginning to lift. I could hear the cruisers clearly now. Sounded like more than one. They’d set up out front and seal off the back. I didn’t hurry, but I didn’t dawdle. Instead, I was just about deliberate as I jumped over the fence and into the alley behind the Woodses’ house. I wondered where Janet was with her kid. I saw a curtain twitch at the window to my left. Fucking neighbors. I turned up the collar on my coat, slipped over one fence, then another, threading my way through backyards, heading away from the corpse.

I surfaced a half mile away, on the 5900 block of North Kilpatrick. I walked lightly down the street. My car was parked on Ionia, a block or so from the body. I hoped the cops didn’t canvass the area and take down tag numbers. It would be a big job for the uniforms. Then again, the dead guy did work for the mayor.

I’d taken twenty-five good steps down Kilpatrick when I knew things weren’t going to work out just so.

“Excuse me, sir.”

The voice came from my left. It belonged to a cop. He stepped out from the shadow of a brick three-flat, gun drawn and at his side. I could hear his partner, moving in the yard behind me. He’d have his gun out and up, trained on my left ear. That’s where I would aim and I wouldn’t be messing either.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Where’re you coming from, sir?”

I figured the neighbors had gotten a look at me. Described a man in a dark overcoat, wearing gloves with a black knit hat. Couldn’t be too many of those in the neighborhood. Especially carrying a recently fired Smith and Wesson revolver. One that would happen to match the slugs pulled from a corpse two blocks north. I lifted my hands and turned, slowly, toward the man in blue.

“There’s a gun in my coat pocket, right side. Another on my hip.”

I felt his partner grab me from behind. Felt the steel cuff slip around one wrist, then the second. The snub nose was taken from my pocket. The two cops looked at it, looked at me. One of them slipped it into a clear plastic bag. The other took the nine millimeter off my belt and began reading me my rights. Like I said, sometimes things don’t always fall just right.

I was alone in my cell. Not quite alone. The snub nose was there. At least, in my mind. Last time I saw it was on a bookshelf in my office. Behind a copy of the Iliad. That bothered me. More than anything had bothered me in a long while.

A buzzer rang and my cell door slid open. Three-hundred-plus pounds of black man in an orange jumpsuit creaked into the bunk below me without a word. The cell door slammed shut and we were alone. I could hear voices from somewhere down the hall, harsh angry sounds, the buzz of violence humming just underneath. A metallic lock turned over and a second door slammed somewhere close. Then it was quiet again. I stared at chunks of grayish plaster curling off the ceiling and wondered how much of it was asbestos. A long slow bout with cancer, however, was the least of my worries.

“White meat.”

The voice came from the depths below. It was a voice without malice, without anger. Just a lethal sort of boredom.

“Name’s Kelly,” I said and tried to slow down time as much as I could. If I had to fight, I’d fight. That was how it went inside. Unless you preferred a shank in the stomach, that is.

“Kelly, huh. Heard them guards talking ’bout you. Said you was a cop. Done up for murder. I’m thinking you ain’t Kelly no more, boy. Just white meat.”

My new friend laughed and shifted his body weight in the bed below. I swung off my bunk, boots first, and caught him flush with a size ten in the side of the head. The connection felt good. His head slammed back against the iron post of the bed frame. That felt even better. I dragged him by the shirt, out of the bunk, and onto the floor. He was heavy and out of shape. He was also most likely a killer, locked up with me in a space eight feet long by five feet wide. Best not to take any chances. Before he could get to his feet, I kicked him again, twice more, solid shots to the back of the head. He was groggy now but still with it. I ripped his shirt over his face so he couldn’t bite me. He got one hand around my windpipe and began to squeeze. I wrestled him over to the toilet, broke his grip, and drove his head to the bottom of the metal bowl. He came up for air after about ten seconds, his head slipping free of the shirt. I waited for him to say enough but he wasn’t saying anything. Just blowing air and trying to grab at me. I was behind him now and that wasn’t going to happen. The key was to keep things moving. Keep him off balance. No time to think of a way to get the advantage. I moved him off the toilet and back to the bed. I’d stripped off my pillowcase before he’d even entered the cell. Now I whipped it tight around his neck and began to squeeze from behind. His body was still on the floor, his face and neck soaked and lying on the side of the lower berth. We’d been at it less than thirty seconds and had barely made a sound. I thought I had another fifteen to twenty seconds left in me. Either he’d be dead, I’d be dead, or we’d come to an understanding. I leaned close to my cellie’s ear.

“You want to fuck with me? That what you want?”

I twisted the linen tighter around his neck and looked for the results in his face. The mouth was open now. Eyes bulged white and red in their sockets. I could see his chest, full of air that had nowhere to go, and his tongue, playing between a set of yellow teeth and silver fillings. I leaned in again.

“We got a problem, I’ll finish this right here. Like you said, I’m done for murder anyhow. Up to you, friend.”

I waited. My cellmate gave the slightest nod of his head. I loosened my hold on the pillowcase and he slammed forward into the bed. Taking in great reaches of air, spitting up some blood.

“Fuck the matter with you?” he gasped.

I kicked back up onto my bed. Wary but willing to believe it was finished.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Marcus.”

“Well fuck off, Marcus. I ain’t nobody’s meat. And if I have to kill a motherfucker like you to prove it, that’s okay too.”

Marcus was leaning forward on his bunk now, rubbing his neck, grabbing some more air and giving me a look of proper disdain.

“If I want you cut, white meat. You get cut.”

“You think so?”

“I do. Now stash all the fucking Rambo shit. I don’t want to fight you. Just seeing if you was going to be a bitch in here or what.”

“Now you know.”

“Okay, now I know.”

“Great, Marcus. Now leave me the fuck alone.”

“You a grouchy ass,” Marcus said and spit some more blood onto the cement floor. Then he eased back down in his bunk. I did the same. Marcus, however, couldn’t leave it alone.

“You really a cop?”

“Not anymore.”

“Who you kill?”

“Shut up, Marcus.”

“Was it a bitch? I killed a bitch of mine on the South Side a while back. Shit, ten years ago now. Screwing my brother, you can believe that. Not what I’m in here for though. Fucking cops too dumb for that.”

The buzzer rang and a skinny white guard came up. He carried a badge, a nightstick, and a bad complexion. He looked at me, looked at Marcus, and looked at some of Marcus’ blood on the floor.