The Good Kind of Bad (35 page)

‘I had to leave one.’

‘Why?’

‘They asked for one! I was at the Four Seasons for a while. I needed any correspondence sent on. How could I know Will would turn up looking for me?’

‘Okay, you didn’t know about Will, but did you have to tell your dad where you were? For Christ’s sake, honey.’

‘I called him, and he asked about me, like father’s do, about how Joe and I were doing. He asked for my address so I had to tell him about the hotel.’

‘And . . . you trust this
Will
guy? You trust him not to tell?’

‘Will doesn’t know anyone in Chicago, and why would he tell anyone your address anyway?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s left it here.’ I collected the crumpled paper from the coffee table. ‘Stop worrying.’

Evan chewed his lip. He didn’t look like a man with nothing to worry about. ‘It’s still a link from Joe to me.’

‘What, and I’m not?’

‘No one knows you’re here! Or I thought they didn’t. Now you might as well have phoned Zupansky and given him a map and shovel while you were at it.’

Sunday night was movie night.

It’d been Evan’s idea, a distraction after Will’s Thursday blink-and-you’d-miss-it cameo. After asking if we should be seen together in public, Evan laughed and said, ‘It’s dark in the movies.’ Surely one film couldn’t hurt, one attempt at normality.

Almost ready, I was crouched on the guest bedroom floor in jeans and a red Balenciaga scoop neck top (a safe enough non-date outfit), stretching under the bed for my elusive cream wedge. Waving my hand between the bedposts, I soon hit something, though rather than my shoe it was smooth and square and made of soft leather. Intrigued, I dragged it out by the handle.

It was a heavy black briefcase, Italian made, and the catches were open. Sitting on the floor, my fingers travelled the leather before they slipped down to the double locks but I hesitated before lifting the lid, not brave enough to pull it open but not stupid enough to push it away either.

I could take a peek inside. It wasn’t locked. Checking my back, the door to the bedroom was closed with Evan murdering a tune somewhere down the hall. In one swift movement I opened the lid and peered inside.

Thousands of dollars stared back at me, crisp green notes in neat little bundles, tied with red elastic. I picked the white scrap of paper from the lid. Across it was an address scrawled in barely legible handwriting:

THE PRINCIPE, 111 CORNFIELD, LAKE VIEW 60613

Not only was the whole thing majorly suspicious, it was downright bizarre.

Clambering to standing, I dropped my eyes to the money, guessing at how much was there. One hundred thousand? Two, three, five? Then there was the briefcase itself. This wasn’t a mob movie. People didn’t stash money like that in real life.

I was still staring at the case when I heard footsteps in the hall and then a knock on my door. Evan was right outside.

‘Honey, did you find your shoe . . .’ he asked, walking in.

I was half under the bed, half panicked and half panting as I frantically pushed the briefcase back into position.

‘What are you doing under the bed?’

With my back to the floor, I ungracefully slid myself into the light. ‘Oh, here it is!’ I called, holding my cream wedge aloft. Close call didn’t cover it.

‘I’ll fetch my jacket and we can go, okay?’ Evan murmured, giving me a curious second glance as he sauntered out the door.

My life might have bordered on the bizarro for the last month or so, but this was a whole new level of weirdness. Why did Evan have thousands of dollars stashed under my bed? Had he never heard of a bank? And was it even his to begin with? His gold digger of a stepmother had taken his inheritance, or so he’d said.

I’d see the film, like arranged, to keep up appearances, though at the first opportunity I was turning PI, taking a trip up to Lake View, and The Principe.

Lo and behold, Evan had agreed to a chick flick.
Charlie and Me
was a holiday romance kind of film, set in the drug-fuelled, club-crazed Balearics. Assuring him there’d be plenty of scantily clad women in bikinis, he hadn’t taken much convincing after that.

‘You think you got enough food?’ I asked, as he returned to his cinema seat, weighed down by most of the refreshment trolley.

‘I get hungry with all this sitting still.’

As he passed me a hotdog, I knew that was a lie. Evan had wriggled over the velour seat like he had ants in his pants long before he’d made a beeline for the food.

As the romance between Faith and Charlie unfolded to ‘Cafe Del Mar’ on the thirty-foot screen, it was Evan I watched. The popcorn crackled between his molars like he was chewing on ice as his hands repeatedly charted the stubble on his jaw.

Evan’s nervousness was elevating my own anxiety. I couldn’t stop thinking about the briefcase. As the music thundered, my anxiety took the floor from beneath me, from beneath us all. It was like the centre of my world was about to split open and spew lava over the life I’d built from the ashes of Joe.

My breaths fell deep as I tried to lose myself in the film. We were here to join another story, to spend ninety delicious minutes in a summer of carefree young love, though it was an escape I no longer needed. That was for lives predictable and mundane, for people who knew the punchline, the lucky people who didn’t even know it.

Evan’s glazed eyes stared out beyond the screen. I could’ve left my seat and climbed over him into the aisle and he wouldn’t have flinched. He was frozen, a shop dummy, going through the motions as the gallon of coke was gulped into his gut. Suck, swallow. Suck, swallow.

On the journey home and from the passenger seat of Evan’s Lincoln, I dared myself to mention The Principe, or what the money was for, but there’d hardly been a murmur from Evan since the credits had rolled. It was not cosy chat time, but it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t be long before I figured out what was going on.

At the apartment door, I slipped off my wedges and headed for the kitchen, Evan locking the door behind us and disappearing off into the lounge. I soon developed a Sybil-shaped shadow, her paws creating little patter noises down the corridor into the kitchen.

‘You want more food, Sybil? Is that why you’re always under my feet?’ I asked, almost expecting an answer.

Sybil’s tail wagged furiously as she expelled a sharp yap.

‘You’ll just have to wait.’ As I took another bite of my cookie from the egg-shaped jar, I couldn’t resist her eyes and threw the rest down. How she wasn’t morbidly obese was a mystery. She may have been too fat for the Four Seasons, but her metabolism would suit me fine.

‘Hey, Evan, you want a coffee? I’m making one,’ I shouted down the hallway before I heard my phone ring. It was muffled, from somewhere within my house of a handbag on the kitchen table, and it took some serious rooting to grab it before the call diverted to voicemail.

‘Hello?’ I answered.

‘Where are you? At the hotel?’

I knew that voice. It was one I’d longed to hear since our argument, and the last person I now expected to be calling. ‘Nina?’

‘Wait ‒ before you start into your Queen Bitch routine, I need to tell you something, and now. Can you meet me outside my building?’ Her voice was quiet, like her words had an audience. ‘Promise you’ll come?’

‘What’s going on, Nina? I’m not at the hotel. You don’t talk to me for nearly a week, and now . . .’

‘You have to listen to me. I know you were on North Michigan tonight. I saw you, outside the movie theatre,’ she panted. ‘Mickey took me to Avenues on North Michigan for my birthday. I have to see you. Please . . . you need to know.’ She breathed her words through desperation, her speech rapid and the words staggered.

A shiver ran through me. Had she done it? Had she told Mickey or the police about Evan and Joe? Was this her twisted attempt at a confession? ‘Nina, you’re not making any sense.’

‘Don’t you get it? I watched you cross the street and climb into that Lincoln. If I saw you leave then I know you weren’t alone: tall, blond, bomber jacket, sound familiar?’

‘Yeah, I’m with Evan. I don’t get what you’re trying to say.’

‘You’re with him
now
?’

‘Yeah, at his apartment. I’m staying with him, after that guy in the trench coat . . .’

‘Jesus. You need to leave. This was the soonest I could call, ’til I was alone. Please, promise you’ll get out of there?’

‘Nina . . . if this is some game . . .’

‘You think this is a game? You don’t get it, do you? Tonight isn’t the first time I’ve seen Evan.’

‘I know. He came to Faith, about the break in.’

‘Yeah, he came to Faith, but I wasn’t there. I was with Mickey at The American Club in Wisconsin. I met Evan when he came to my apartment, warning me to keep my mouth shut . . . when he threatened to
kill
me. Open your eyes, girl. Can you see it yet? The truth? Your precious Evan is
Victor
.’

There was breaking glass before a voice roared and Nina screamed. My heart jumped into my mouth as I frantically called her name, but I was left with only the dial tone.

I rushed into the hall, half throwing on my jacket and sliding into a pair of grey trainers. I couldn’t have heard it, Nina’s accusation or her scream. ‘I’m going to the Jewel. We haven’t got any coffee. Do you want anything, Evan?’ My voice wavered through the lie. Saying his name felt like a knife slicing at my throat. Evan was Victor. Victor was Evan. All this time, all the stories and threats and violence . . . every little bit of intimidation had been my gracious host, my saviour on the street.

My excuse for leaving was a lame one, though arriving at the lounge I found it empty. Evan was out on the terrace with his back to me, staring at the city.

‘Coffee. Jewel. Right,’ he replied, not fully turning around. ‘Go to the one at the bottom of the street, and come right back.’

Backing slowly out of the apartment, amazed I’d escaped so easily, I ran the short distance to Nina’s apartment. I was developing quite the physique with all the running around Chicago I’d been doing. Since moving from South Evergreen, I’d never ventured back to Nina’s plush abode, even though the move to the suite and then West Superior meant we were practically neighbours, in the Chicago sense at least, though our relationship had been in decadent decline; the most we’d managed was a muffled greeting in the lift at Faith.

Even on a balmy July night, Chicago was a frightening place to be alone. The buildings closed in, the tall generic façades screaming for me to turn back. Eyes stared out as I pulled close my coat to guard against the night. With all resentment and ill-feeling dispersing, I cared only for Nina’s safety.

Turning the corner of Springwood Avenue, I stood at the foot of Nina’s building, watching it climb into the night sky. Frantically pressing the intercom for apartment 31, I waited for a voice that never came.

Then I heard it, a crash of metal before a scream cut the air. It had come from the gangway between Nina’s building and the adjacent block. With understandable hesitation I paced forward in the dark, my every fibre begging me to turn and never look back.

The alley was black, lit only by a dull amber streetlight and pale half-moon. Stale water gathered in cloudy pools, a fitting accompaniment to the mephitic stench of rotting vegetables. Then a car engine turned over, my eyes stinging at the sudden flash of headlights.

I jumped into a doorway, fortuitously shrouded by a brick wall. Peering around my blockade and, while adjusting to the glare, the alley’s occupants were laid bare. There was Nina, held fast by two burly men, one with a hand across her mouth to catch her screams.

There was another man off to the right, pacing the alley floor with a gun in hand. I wanted to be sick. Nina’s white
Sister Act
dress was ripped and smeared with blood. Adorned with streaks of mud, it looked like she’d been kicked up and down the alley like a football.

I willed myself to shout, scream, create some kind of diversion . . . but I was too much of a coward, too afraid of the gun to put
myself
in harm’s way.

When I looked closer, I recognised the gun-toter as none other than Mickey Delacro, his now-shaven head exposing a scar that tore across his scalp. On his angular jaw, the moonlight created hollow shadows, his wicked grin gratis.

Mickey’s hand shook wildly, the gun slowly rising. Again Nina thrashed against the men until Mickey shouted and one henchman forced opened her mouth. She pushed and kicked and screamed, but following a slap from Mickey, her fight steadily waned, leaving her with only the sobs.

As the men stepped back, Mickey held her by the chin, raised the gun and rammed the barrel between Nina’s teeth. I was suffocating, the metal souring my own mouth. I was a good twenty metres away, but could still see Mickey’s face, his real one. He didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to pull the trigger. He’d spare her, he loved her; this was another scare tactic like TC Guy. They were engaged. He’d lowered to one knee, and asked her for forever. He might have landed his fists on her face, but there was a difference between coward and murderer. He didn’t have it in him to
kill
her.