The Good Kind of Bad (38 page)

He sighed. ‘I want to make sure there’ll be no phone calls to our friend Zupansky while I’m gone. Can you promise me that?’

Engrossed by the riveting mug handle, I couldn’t look at him. I’d only want to punch him in the face. I would have loved to launch into a scathing tirade of abuse, accusing and chastising him for taking away my friend, but I knew how Evan worked, or at least, I thought I did. He’d removed the chair from the door to see what I did. I’d sat down, and made a cup of coffee. He was testing me. He wanted to see if I believed him. My actions said I trusted him, something I needed him to believe. That’s why I hadn’t shot out of the door.

Even if I’d called the police, I needed cold, hard proof against Evan first. I’d have to swallow my words. If he trusted me, I’d stop being watched. If Evan
was
Victor, then nothing he said or did would let me forget that. This man before me, the man I could barely look at, was a dangerous, calculating criminal, but this time Evan would be the one in the dark. It was time to play some games of my own.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened last night. Maybe it was brain freeze from the slushies during
Charlie and Me
, but no drugs, I swear.’ Last night I’d accused him of ordering the execution of my friend. It was the lamest excuse known to man.

He dipped his head. ‘You believe me now?’

‘I don’t know what I saw. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry, Evan.’

What do you know? He bought it. ‘Christ, honey, don’t ever do that to me again. Man, I’ve been so worried about you. Has this ever happened before? Hallucinations and shit? It was scary. You were scary. I think we should still call that doctor. He could prescribe you something to take the edge off. To make you feel better.’

The edges had been well and truly off for days, the muted tones of the apartment numbed by my old friends. At least Evan believed my lies now; though, more importantly, I knew his truth.

After he left for work, mumbling into his phone, I crawled back between the covers to cry for Nina until I drowned in the tears. It was past midday already. Evan had left my confiscated phone on the kitchen table, telling me work had been phoning, but Faith was the last place I could stomach being, pretending Nina was on another jaunt to the Caribbean rather than weighed down at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

The guilt tore at my stomach walls ‒ not only because I hadn’t saved her, but I couldn’t tell anyone what’d happened until Evan was strapped up to two thousand volts. I couldn’t go to the cops until I had evidence on him and Mickey, that sticky thing known as proof. I had to stay at Evan’s until I could prove he was Victor, until I discovered what it was all about. Then through a cloudy head came my lightning bolt moment. The money. The briefcase.

I crawled from the bed and knelt down on the floor, peering beneath the mattress. The briefcase was still there, right where I’d left it. Pulling it into the light once more, I lifted the briefcase lid, checked the money and re-read the address on the scrap of paper. Journeying back to the kitchen and taking my phone from the table, I googled ‘The Principe, Lake View.’ There were a few old entries relating to some sort of sports bar, but nothing other than that. I needed my Victor proof – it could easily be a dead end but I had to try
something
. It was high time I visited Lake View, and The Principe.

With my migraine tamed by super-strength painkillers and the address saved into Google Maps on my phone, I hopped the Red Line train north. After learning I was living with Victor, TC Guy didn’t have the same run-for-your-life hold on me. Like with Joe, the danger was within my walls, not outside them.

As I alighted at Addison Station, the early afternoon sun warmed my skin. I walked the surprisingly quiet streets bordering Wrigley Field and along North Clark until I found Cornfield, a tree-lined road set two blocks back from the main action. There were no bleachers on the rooftops here.

Cornfield was mainly cute townhouses, small apartment blocks and a few delicatessens. Along the street, I counted the house numbers. 107, 109, 111. The Principe. It was a falling-down kind of place, not in keeping with the rest of the street, and the faded shamrock stickers in the window confirmed its once incarnation as a sports bar. The peeling green sign had seen better days and the rotted wood-framed windows were caked in thirty-year-old crud. Judging by the scaffolding holding the place up, I was going for closed. I tried the front door. Locked.

Using the alley at the left of the building, I checked around the back. The yard yielded no signs of life apart from some empty Coors bottles, stray cigarette ends and a pile of plastic beer crates.

I was all ready to leave when an upstairs window opened, and a head poked out.

‘You here about the sale?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘You’re from the real estate company, right? Ferguson’s?’

‘Yeah, Ferguson’s.’ Real estate? What did I know about real estate? Apart from a simple norm core white shift dress and my orange Givenchy bucket bag, I hardly looked like a house-selling diva. Blighted by the earlier headache, I couldn’t remember if I’d even combed my hair.

‘Hold on.’ The guy was soon at the back door, his bulging eyes peering out through the letterbox. ‘Come to the front. There’s no key.’

When I did get inside, nervous as I went, I began to wish I’d never opened Evan’s briefcase. My guy at the window was going for most tattoos per square inch of flesh and looked like he’d lost his way home from a Hell’s Angels convention. The place was a dump. The peeling wallpaper was in a fashionable sick green and there was random crap strewn everywhere. Old magazines, discarded food wrappers, rusted cans of paint . . . Whoever started the spot of renovation had thought better of it mid-paint stroke.

I dug my work folder out of my bag to look more like I had a clue, but my heart still raced at a million miles an hour. I was here because of an address in Evan’s briefcase of money. Not that Evan wasn’t, but this guy could be some violent, psycho criminal and I’d thought it wise to go into an abandoned building with him. Forget the Kane County wood; there were plenty of places in The Principe to hide a body.

After negotiating our way around the obstacle course to the bottom of the stairs, Tattoo Guy grunted, ‘Do you need to measure up?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The rooms, for the listing?’

‘Uh, I have a few questions first.’ I began writing on my pad, though the only words out of my pen were
crap crap crap
. ‘What’s the building being used for? Do any businesses operate out of here? It’s for the use clause.’ Use clause. Good one. That’d outfox him.

‘Nothing. It’s not used for nothing, lady.’

I was about to ask who owned the place when I heard another voice calling from upstairs.

‘Yo, S. Who’s down there?’

‘It’s some lady from the real estate place,’ he shouted back, hanging on the newel post.

There was a pause.

‘Well then, send her up.’

I mumbled something about being late for a meeting, but S was quite insistent I met with the voice. Up the stairs I went, gagging after sidestepping a dead mouse. With the bulk of the mysterious Mr S behind me, there was no way out but up, and to the voice at the top of the stairs.

Once on the creaking landing, S pointed to a blue door. ‘He’s in there.’

‘This one?’ I asked.

‘This one.’

That bought me all of two seconds.

Pushing the door off to the right, I walked into the room, dank and gloomy and mostly taken up by a grubby, cluttered desk. Behind it sat a man with his back to me, glancing through the small window ahead. As he spun the chair around, I almost expected him to be stroking a cat. Instead, a guy with a mess of dark hair and a face full of stubble smiled at me; a man in a trench coat.

‘Mrs Petrozzi, how nice to see you again. You working in real estate now or are you still at Faith Advertising?’

Even if I’d wanted to move, I couldn’t. The man that’d chased me, stalked me, downright hunted me around the streets of Chicago, was here. I was right. Evan
had
sent TC Guy to follow me. This had to be Evan’s building.

Finding my feet, I backed towards the door, nice and slowly. ‘Who are you?’ I asked, my fingers blindly reaching for the door handle.

He chewed on the end of his pen, before chucking it onto the desk. ‘A friend.’

‘Whose friend?’

‘Man, it’s so nice to meet you finally. I feel like we’re family or something. You shouldn’t have run from me that day. Hell, I wasn’t going to hurt you. As for my friend, you know Mickey, right? But sure you do. You watched him kill Nina last night. You won’t run to the cops, will you? No. You would’ve done it already. Clever girl. Mickey’s got a super crazy temper, as you know. Handy you stopped by, though. I have a message for you.’

‘A message?’

‘To take back to Evan. Isn’t that why you’re here?’

‘If you have a message for him, you should tell him yourself,’ I braved. ‘He’s your boss.’

‘Not unless I’m missing something he’s not. Now, you run back and tell Evan that Mickey won’t reconsider. I guess he told you Mickey’s made him another offer this morning. Like I said, Mickey angry, etcetera, etcetera.’ He folded his arms behind his head, his chair rocking from side to side.

Mickey. The guy Evan
swore
he didn’t know.

I grasped the handle with my back to the door, but I couldn’t leave, not yet. I had to know. ‘What won’t Mickey reconsider?’

‘Um, the half a million Evan now owes him?’

‘Dollars?’

‘That’d be the one.’

This guy had seen the spoilers. If anyone knew, TC Guy would. ‘Is Evan . . . is Evan, Victor?’

I’d never heard anyone laugh so loud, and for so long.

‘Victor? Who told you that?’ he chuckled, wiping away a tear.

‘Nina. Nina told me that.’

‘You know she was visiting a shrink, right? Mickey took her, he said Nina was delusional, she thought someone wanted to kill her, that kind of shit. Stupid bitch. I think Mickey did her a favour blowing out her skull.’

‘You bastard,’ I breathed.

He rose to standing, patting his trench coat. ‘Remember who’s got the gun here, girly.’

He had a gun? Of course he did. This was TC Guy.

‘Nina was crazy. She probably thought the Cubs had won the World Series in her little fantasyland, which brings me back to your question. Is Evan Victor? Well, what do you think?’

‘I don’t know what to think anymore.’

‘How about if I told you he isn’t real, that Nina invented him. Would you believe me then?’

‘I’ll go with
no
.’

‘There is no Victor. It was all in her head. That doctor said so. And you’ve been thinking
Evan
was Victor? Poor guy. You’ve got some grovelling to do, girl.’

‘Why follow me then?’

‘Because Nina told you about Mickey. I was just keeping tabs on you. And if you ever
made
me? I was supposed to chase you, shit you up a little. Did it work? Was I stalker-y enough?’ he asked, wiggling his fingers.

‘That’s why he killed her? Because she told me what he’d been doing?’

‘That’s some guilt to live with, huh? In the end, she was too much of a liability to keep breathing.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Now run along home, and don’t forget to tell Evan. Wednesday is payday. He’s got two days. For each one he misses, Mickey’s adding the generous amount of five hundred grand interest. Tell him to pay and his problems go bye-bye.’

There was one more question I was owed the answer to, before I shot out of the door and bolted down the stairs. Before TC Guy shot
me
. ‘Why does Evan owe Mickey money?’

‘You’ll have to ask him yourself. I’m sure he’s
dying
to tell you.’

I needed a drink. I needed something stronger than a drink. From the train window the world swam by, swirling and backflipping and doing its best to make me vomit.

I’d been sure, so convinced by Nina’s desperation on the phone, certain Evan was Victor. He’d threatened her that night at the apartment, but outside the cinema she’d seen Evan from across the street, and maybe only from behind. Was Evan the cloaked figure that turned good guys bad, or had she got the wrong guy?

Then it hit me. If TC Guy was telling the truth about Nina, that she’d been delusional, then why did her
imaginary
Victor look like Evan? A man she never met and didn’t know? How could I take the word of a man who’d been stalking me? But then if Evan was the ringleader, why did he owe Mickey half a million dollars?

Evan had to be involved. Evan had said he wasn’t Victor, TC Guy said Evan wasn’t Victor, but Evan
had
lied, he did know Mickey Delacro, someone he’d flat out refused to acknowledge. Not only that, but he owed the scumbag money, and a shed load of money. Lastly, he’d lied about Nina. If Mickey and Evan were financially involved, he had to know what’d happened to her. He had to know she’d been murdered.