The Good Boy (34 page)

Pete scrolls to Elgin’s incarceration information. His listed “parent institution” is Vienna Correctional Center—a minimum-security lockup close to the Kentucky state line. Pete knew they sent him there—way down there—on a three-year sentence, his drug charge listed as “other amt narcotic sched i&ii.” What he didn’t know was that his projected parole date had come and gone, and that his offender status was now Parole.

His parole location: District One.

Cook County.

Here.

He’s got to tell Sarah.

*   *   *

Back in the kitchen, Sarah is busy putting away the Indian food. Rima is making coffee and McKenna is making her disgusted face as Sandee says, “You think that tastes funny, kid, I’ll bet you wouldn’t touch
lašiniai.
”

“What’s that?” McKenna asks, but not like she cares; she’s looking at her thumbs, hands poised like she’s missing her phone.

“Cured fatback.”

“I don’t know what that is, either.”

“It’s like bacon,” Rima says as she sneaks around Sarah, who is making a logistical nightmare out of stacking containers in the fridge.

“Well, bacon, sorta,” Sandee says, “except you don’t cook it.”

“Raw bacon?” Mike pushes her plate out of the way. “Gag.”

“Oh, it’s wonderful,” Sandee says. “My mother used to make it. She’d cut pig fat into slabs and stack them in a wooden barrel between layers of salt and then we’d eat them on black bread with onions.”

“You sound like you’re from the Dark Ages,” McKenna says, literally twiddling her thumbs.

“McKenna—” Sarah warns.

“I’m from Lithuania,” Sandee says.

“Different normal,” Ri says, looking over at Pete as she shakes the creamer.

“You think that’s gross,” Sandee says, “you oughta try eating in China. Bird nests, duck tongue—I ate a frickin’ starfish when I was in Shanghai. Those people eat everything.”

“They eat dog,” Molly announces.

All the ladies stop to look at her.

“Molly,” Sarah says after an uncomfortable silence, “would you like some ice cream?”

Sandee offers her seat. “Why don’t you have some, Fancy Nuts? We’re going to stay a little while longer. There’s a detective on his way over.”

“A detective?” Pete says to Sarah; what, the kid just talked to a stump?

“What flavor is it?” Molly asks.

“Your nickname is Fancy Nuts?” Rima asks.

“His name is Bo Colton,” Sarah sing-songs, now digging around the freezer, clearly avoiding eye contact with Pete. “He’s the lead on Joel’s case.” She holds up the half gallon of Neapolitan.

“I like strawberry,” Molly says, taking the seat.

Sandee says, “I buy her mixed nuts and she only eats the pecans. We have sixteen cans of every other kind of nut.”

Sarah says, “He thinks Molly might be able to help him figure out where Joel went.”

“Assuming he went,” Ri says and tries to hand Pete a cup of coffee. He doesn’t want it.

Sarah is being real careful about dishing just the strawberry until Pete takes the scoop away and hands it to Rima and takes Sarah into the front room and he doesn’t bother with the lights but he tries to keep his voice down: “What the hell is going on here? How are you all sitting around talking about fucking fatback when our son is missing?”

“Jesus Christ, Pete, what. Am I supposed to have a meltdown every hour on the hour to prove how upset I am? The neighbors and the fucking teachers and
you
now—”

“I know you’re upset.”

“No you don’t. You haven’t been here.” She’s doing her tough act—a pretty good show done from a self-built stage of reason, where she’s the only one who makes sense.

And so what sense will it make to tell her about Elgin? What good will it do Pete to tell her that this
is
his fault—that he brought this shit into their lives again? And that this time it might be worse? How can he tell her when it will only make her hate him more?

“I know you’re upset,” he says again, with different intention. He won’t tell her; he won’t say anything at all. He moves to her, arms open, but she backs away.

“I spoke to Detective Colton and to Dr. Drake,” she says; she doesn’t want a hug, she wants to be able to explain about Joel. “My understanding is that it’s common for repressed memories to drive an episode like this.”

“Repressed memory of what?” Is she talking about Poole? Does she know already? Is she baiting him?

“Pick one, Pete. After everything that’s happened this past year?”

“Sarah, this isn’t an episode. It was an incident. You do know that by now, don’t you? About what happened at Zack Fowler’s?”

“Yes, of course I know. And if Joel
had
witnessed the shooting, I’m certain it’s what set him off.”

“What about what Molly told you, about the boy on the radio?”

“I think Joel wants attention. I think it was a cry for help, which is extremely common with mood disorders—”

“Are you sure you aren’t getting your self-help books mixed up? He isn’t your brother, Sarah. He isn’t going to wind up like Ricky—”

“Oh no, Pete—you’re not going to blame this on genetics after what
you
did to this family.” She’s fighting, now, but Pete lets it go. Has to. Because she’s right.

“I’m going to find him,” he says, on his way to the door.

“What about Rima?”

“I’m going alone.”

“Good luck,” Sarah calls after him. “You’re just as lost as he is.”

*   *   *

LaFonda Redding’s house is on the south side just east of the Dan Ryan Woods in a nice, working-class neighborhood. LaFonda is the sole owner of the place; she doesn’t have a criminal record, a drug habit, gang ties or even credit trouble. She made her own way, a beautician who started out renting a chair and ended up running a salon. That’s how she met Elgin: she was the one who gave him the half-fro that’s as memorable as his made-up vocabulary.

He turned out to be her only weakness.

When fame struck Elgin, LaFonda caught the love bug, and bad. The deal was sealed when a group of reporters followed him to her chair for an interview; he did his thang while LaFonda ran her tiger-striped nails through his hair. Pretty soon they were a power couple, of sorts—the sort that comes from one being an overnight Internet sensation and the other enjoying the benefits of free advertising. She called him Sweetness, he nicknamed her Mizz Redbone; she bought him a diamond-studded nameplate necklace, and he bought her the flashy car.

Pete parks the squad outside LaFonda’s white-brick ranch. He knows the place because he started keeping tabs on Elgin after he showed up on his turf, scared the shit out of Sarah. Elgin was arrested here late last year on a drug charge.

The arrest was no surprise because everybody knew he was enjoying the high life; that he was also getting high was an accurate assumption. As a matter of fact, footage was available online—though the TV deals fell through, Elgin continued to chase his star and so replaced rants about his dead brother with raves on certain illegal narcotics. When detectives were ready, the bust was as easy as sending a couple of uniforms to LaFonda’s to catch a live taping. They turned up enough dope to put Elgin away for three years.

Though apparently, they didn’t.

The car in the driveway isn’t Mizz Redbone but a high-end tricked-out white Escalade, chrome wheels. Lights are on in the house; two giant all-white cat sculptures stand in the front window. LaFonda likes her cats—big cats—as made evident in her leopard-printed salon, a place Pete went once for a haircut after Elgin was incarcerated. Risky, maybe, but LaFonda was another tab that needed keeping.

Pete turns off the radio. WBBM covered news of the storm and the thousands of people who lost power. The weatherman said the rain was over and predicted the wet weather would ease. Pete hopes the guy’s right for once. Since the sun went down, the temperature’s dropped a good ten degrees. He can’t think about his boys out there, Joel wandering around in cold, wet clothes and Butch near feral, gone thunder-mad.

Pete takes the front walk up to the house. Between window cats, the living room looks like a boutique-hotel lobby: cream leather sofas with shag rugs to match, giant orchids in black granite vases, gold-framed jungle-theme lithographs on the walls. And more cat figurines. These black, prowling the mirrored tabletops.

On the right, a hallway stretches back to where a soft flicker glints off an open door, more yellow than blue, more candle than television. Pete rings the doorbell, wondering if whatever’s going on in that back room is amorous, and if his badge is going to ruin the mood.

LaFonda comes out of the room alone though she’s dressed like she should be at a party, the highest heels and tightest cheetah-print capris and, well, if Pete’s going for superlatives, the biggest—

She opens the door. Definitely not the biggest smile.

“What you want?”

“I’m looking for Elgin Poole.”

“You think I know Elgin Poole? Shit.” Her eyebrows look like they’ve been waxed into arcs of perpetual disgust.

“You used to know him.”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t bother with that no more.” If those eyebrows could talk, Pete’s sure they’d tell him a few bitter reasons why.

She looks Pete up and down, says, “I know you?”

“Everybody needs a haircut, right?”

“You— Hey?” She recognizes him, but doesn’t quite remember. She looks past him, sees the K9 emblem on the car and says, “You, you got that puppy squad. You the guy—”

“I’m the guy who’s here asking about your car. Mizz Redbone?”

“That ain’t my car.”

“It’s still registered to you.”

“No, that my car right there, in the drive.” She turns, a glance back to the room she came from, giving Pete a whiff of some kind of musky perfume, and also a nice brandy.

“Someone back there who might know about the car?” Pete asks, wondering if he should have worn his gun as well as his star.

“Nobody who need to know. See here: Elgin bought that Redbone car, a present to me. I ain’t ever know it were in my name.”

Pete skips the part about how her name is painted on it and says, “I’m sorry, but it’s in your name, and witnesses have identified it at the scene of a shooting. I need to know who’s driving your car.”

“Now I’m in some kind of trouble?”

“That depends. Do you know where Elgin is?”

She shakes her head,
no, nuh-uh
. “Last I know, Elgin in jail.”

“Are you sure about that?” Pete studies her reaction; her eyebrows might tell what her mouth won’t.

“When he get out?”

“Two months ago. You didn’t know?”

“How would I know?” Her brows bend ever so slightly, a little sympathy.

“Because you used to love him.”

“I told you I ain’t bother with that no more. I don’t know why I ever bother in the first place. My head is on straight but my heart is so flexuous.”

Pete isn’t sure that’s a word; maybe she got it from Elgin. But he says, “I get it. You can’t stop love.”

“Can’t start love neither, sometimes,” she says, another glance toward the back room.

“LaFonda, here’s the deal: I happen to know someone who can take care of your Mizz Redbone situation. As an alternative, I also happen to know someone who would like to come here and search the place for Elgin. Letting him drive your car could be considered aiding and abetting.”

“I ain’t never aided Elgin in my life. He gone to drugs, gone to jail, gone to me.”

“Maybe you can tell me somebody he
isn’t
gone to? If I’m going to help you, I need Elgin first.”

She clicks her acrylic nails on the doorframe, eyes on his badge. “His sister. Elexus.”

“Where do I find her?”

“What’s my guarantee if I tell you? I don’t want this coming back around again. I don’t need no Elgin Poole or anybody who wants to know about him knocking on this door again.”

“I can guarantee the car won’t be a problem again. I don’t know about your heart.”

“LaFonda?” comes a male voice from the back room.

“Don’t you worry, my heart got someone else to mess with it now. Lemme get her number. Got to tell you though, Elexus is a supreme bitch.”

“It’s not often I get to deal with someone as pleasant as yourself.”

“Uh-huh, sure, Officer. Wait here.” She leaves the door open and swivels on one heel, gliding through the living room, back down the hall to Elgin’s replacement.

*   *   *

Elexus doesn’t answer her phone, but her voice-mail greeting promises callers can find her “onstage tonight.” It doesn’t take much police work to figure out she isn’t referring to a starring role at the Shakespeare Rep.

The Factory is a strip club off the Bishop Ford Expressway where the city thins out to office parks and billboards advertise the wonders of Indiana. The odometer says he’s only eight miles from LaFonda’s place, but Pete always feels farther from home when he’s on the south side.

He pulls into the giant, mostly empty lot at ten thirty. There are two valet guys in red windbreakers hanging around the entrance’s rotunda, so he sticks to the perimeter and does a lap around the building. Even though the back of the place is dark, cameras are fixtures on every corner. If he means to go in as a john instead of a dick, he can’t park in the lot.

He pulls back onto the frontage road, drives north to 120th Street, and parks in front of an auto parts manufacturer.

He leaves his duty belt in the trunk and makes his way back to the club. They probably don’t see much walk-up business; the only place to walk up from is the House of Hope Church arena about a mile north. Pete doubts the Baptists send much traffic this way, on foot or otherwise.

When he enters the lot, a skinny valet jogs over from the rotunda.

“Sir,” he says, “our valet service is mandatory.”

“I appreciate that,” Pete says, since the kid probably gets flak from every cheap asshole who thinks an empty parking lot is a free parking lot, or who wants to park his own fancy car and doesn’t think he should have to pay for it. “The thing is, I don’t have a car.”

“I saw you in the cop car.”

“How much?” Pete asks, since money is what’s really mandatory.