‘What made me do it?’ Kelson said as he drove back to his office. ‘Judgment. I always trusted my judgment.’ Next time he saw Dr P, he would ask if his brain injury could change his judgment the way it initially changed his ability to walk through doorways, skewing him by ten or fifteen degrees, smacking him into doorframes any normal man would thread without bumping shoulders. But he already knew Dr P’s answer. Sure, why not? She’d told him a dozen ways already. With the brain, we’re always in new territory. You’re one of a kind, Mr Kelson. Sometimes a brain injury even leads to new characteristics and abilities – a fondness for piano music, a facility with foreign languages.
‘Tak jest,’ he’d said when she told him that last bit – Polish for Yes, sir, a phrase an informant used with him when he worked an undercover job in the Noble Square neighborhood.
Dr P gave him a don’t-screw-with-me look.
Now, he thought about each step he’d taken with the redhead, testing his judgment. The redhead paid him to talk sense into Christian Felbanks, who, she said, was her drug-stealing brother. He reasonably took the job. Then she sent him after Stevens at the office building on Division Street. That time, he should’ve known better. When she called him at his apartment and told him to run, warning him to get Sue Ellen out of harm’s way, he reacted fast and sensibly – taking Sue Ellen to Nancy’s house, then holing up alone. The fact that Dan Peters brought a tactical team to arrest him the next day in no way undermined the soundness of his decision to stay. If he’d run, as the woman told him to, he would’ve looked guilty and his circumstances might’ve been worse. As for today, what choice did he have? What if Dominick Stevens had died? Kelson had a responsibility and he fulfilled it. Could he have done it without getting Stevens’s office staff to call the cops? Maybe. He would count this morning as a partial failure – though even a partial failure went down in the bad-judgment column. That made him two for four.
‘Batting five hundred,’ he said. ‘Pretty good for a player just off the disabled list.’
Still, when he parked his car, went up to his office, and found the redhead sitting in one of the client chairs again, he fumbled his phone out of his pocket and called Peters.
When Peters answered, Kelson yelled, ‘She’s here right now.’
‘What?’ Peters said. ‘Who?’
‘The redhead.’
‘Yeah? Go to hell. Get some help, OK?’ Peters hung up.
Kelson scrambled to redial but dropped the phone.
The redhead watched, arching an eyebrow.
Kelson grabbed the phone, dialed, and, when Peters answered, said, ‘Goddammit—’
‘Goddammit yourself.’ The line went dead again.
Kelson shoved the phone in his pocket and told the woman, ‘I’ll take you in myself.’
‘Don’t get all weirded out. It makes you less attractive.’
Kelson went to his desk and reached for the KelTec in the hidden rig. It was gone. He opened the bottom drawer. It wasn’t there either.
The woman pulled it from her purse and aimed it at him. She said, ‘Having a good ass doesn’t make me stupid.’
‘Clearly.’
‘Now sit down and listen.’
‘Why are you doing this? You could just shoot me.’
‘Sit down.’
He did.
‘We all pay for our mistakes,’ she said. ‘Mine are the only reason I’m here.’
‘Mine was shooting Bicho Rodriguez when he pulled a gun on me?’
‘Seems almost unfair, doesn’t it?’ She held the KelTec lightly. ‘But he was a kid, and you know how that goes. From Mengele’s perspective, you have to understand the anger. I mean, you have a daughter. You know—’
‘Don’t bring her into it. Don’t ever,’ he said. ‘And what about Christian Felbanks and Raima Minhas? What mistakes did they pay for? He was corn-fed and wholesome. Straight from farm to table. And her? An immigrant girl makes good.’
The redhead ran a free finger down the length of the pistol barrel. She tried to sound coy, but her face showed pain. ‘We all have secrets.’
‘Not me,’ he said. ‘Not anymore. I can’t keep them, no matter how hard I try.’
‘That could become a problem. Mengele has a job for you – one you won’t want to talk about. No money in this one. He wants you to kill Dominick Stevens.’
Kelson laughed at her. ‘Not happening.’
She looked pained, ill. ‘Stevens hurt Bicho by sleeping with Francisca Cabon. Mengele uses me to get you, and he’ll use you to get Stevens. He says you can’t pretend you aren’t already involved. He says that’s what you tried to do with Bicho.’
‘You’re an excellent spokesman for him. What’s he got on you?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘But I do. I couldn’t be more interested.’
‘He says you’re delusional. You think you’re better than others.’
‘I won’t kill Dominick Stevens,’ he said. ‘No one will.’
‘At this point, I’m supposed to ask about your ex-wife and daughter.’
He rose from his desk chair, furious – unthinking.
But the redhead raised the pistol with him and aimed it at that spot on his forehead where Bicho had shot away a part of the man he’d been.
And he flinched.
Sweat breaking from his neck, he sat in his chair. ‘If you ever – if Nancy and Sue Ellen ever even think someone might hurt them, I’ll – why are you doing this?’
‘I don’t want to be here. Just like you didn’t want to shoot Bicho. But it’s you or me. You angered the wrong man, and he wants to destroy you. He doesn’t want you dead. He wants you to carry the guilt.’
‘Who is he?’
She shook her head.
‘What will he do to you?’ he asked.
‘If I didn’t do this, he would destroy me too. I’ve been destroyed enough times in my life. I can’t take it again.’
‘What’s he got on you?’
She ignored the question and said, ‘Do you think three days is enough? You know where Stevens works, and now you know where he lives. Since you’ve harassed him so much lately, he’ll probably be on guard, but you can get close enough to do it.’
‘Uh-uh. We go to the police.’
She stood and set the KelTec on the desk. ‘They won’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth.’
Then she walked out of the office.
He sat for a full minute, speechless, staring at … nothing. Then he popped the magazine from the pistol, rolled it in his palm, and snapped it back in.
He knew better than to call Peters. So he called Greg Toselli. Toselli had spent the previous night raiding a building that supposedly housed a child-trafficking operation but had found only a single mattress and a bunch of empty rooms. He was tired and cranky and seemed to have a hard time listening as Kelson told him his troubles.
‘But why would anyone do this?’ he said.
‘Exactly what I asked,’ said Kelson. ‘She made it sound like revenge for Bicho.’
‘But the kid shot you.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘Unless they think you shot him first.’
‘That question never went public.’
‘Either that or someone loved the kid a lot – the kind of love that makes a person violent. What does the redhead get out of this?’
‘She makes it sound like the man’s setting her up too. If she doesn’t do what he says, he’ll spring the trap.’
‘Do you believe her?’
‘Well, this is about more than Bicho – at least enough to get Christian Felbanks and Raima Minhas killed. So maybe there’s something in what she says. But it’s mostly about Bicho. Did you get the records I asked for on him?’
Toselli hesitated. ‘First rule – no man left behind. That includes me too. I’ll do anything for you, but you won’t let this blow back on anyone, right? You’ve got Peters coming at you on one side and these people on the other. Anyone who’s in the middle with you or helping … I mean, if I can get the files for you, will you keep it quiet?’
‘I don’t know if I can. You know, things come out.’
‘That’s what I’m saying. Don’t ask me to do something that hurts you – or me.’
‘So what would you do?’ Kelson said. ‘If you were where I am. You’ve always played the game smart. You get things done.’
Toselli sounded frustrated. ‘You shouldn’t have been in that alley with that kid. You shouldn’t have had a gun. But you were there – and you did – and so how do you get out now? Seems like you’ve got two choices, and you won’t like them. One, you can do something to show you’re listening to this woman. Something that shows you’re taking the threat seriously. Delay the game and give yourself time to figure it out.’
‘Unless it pisses this guy off and he goes after Sue Ellen and Nancy.’
‘I don’t think so. He’s playing you – running you over the psychological ropes, seeing what you’ll take. Sue Ellen and Nancy are his last move – game over.’
‘What’s the other choice?’
‘Take the redhead out of it. Completely out. Whoever’s hiding behind her – if there’s even such a person – either gives up or comes out in the open.’
‘Or finds someone new to front for him.’
‘Hard to find someone like her, from what you say. Of the two choices, that’s the better one. It’s what I’d do. Take care of yourself and take care of your own. Self-defense. She’s holding a gun to your head, right? Same as Bicho. And with Sue Ellen and Nancy, she’s got hostages.’
‘More or less,’ Kelson said.
‘Then do what you’ve got to do.’
‘Maybe so.’
‘But whatever you decide, do it all the way.’
‘Sure.’
‘You’ve got to live by it,’ Toselli said. ‘Make it an absolute principle.’
And they hung up.
Toselli was right – Kelson disliked both choices. Part of him admired his friend’s ability to act decisively in bad situations. He lived by his principles – and other cops owed him their lives. But he also seemed unconcerned about the damage he caused to people outside of his circle.
‘Rough justice,’ Kelson said. ‘Stay on the right side of a man like that. Still, you’ve got to admire him.’ Then he added, ‘Admire but not emulate.’
So instead of gunning for Stevens or the redhead, Kelson went looking for a man he hadn’t seen in two years, since before Bicho shot him in the head.