Whether or not Nuñez knew other dealers who might have heard about a plot to avenge Bicho, Rodman did, though finding the right ones and getting them to talk was a long shot. It would be even longer if Rodman showed up with a stranger who blurted out any thought that crossed his mind and, at the moment, had a hard time keeping clothes on. So Kelson dropped him off in Bronzeville and drove back through the city to his office.
As he put his key in the office door, he half expected Doreen Felbanks to be sitting at his desk in her hot-pink jacket and matching shoes. But the client chairs were empty. He slid open the top drawer to see his picture of Sue Ellen. Then he sat and gazed at her. He was still gazing twenty minutes later when his phone rang.
He had a sense, and, sure enough, Doreen was on the other end. ‘I just came in,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘Are you watching me?’
‘Always.’
He felt a pinprick ache deep in his forehead. He said, ‘You’re trying awfully hard to screw with my mind.’
‘Maybe you have a little mind and it’s easy to screw with it.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I’m only doing what I’m told.’
‘I’m tired of hearing it. And I’m getting the sense it’s a lie. I know about you. Someone hurt you when you were a kid. Maybe a bunch of people did. So now you’re hurting them back. And maybe you see me as hurting another kid, and so I deserve it too.’
‘I think you’re confused. And with Mengele, confusion is dangerous.’
‘Who’s Bicho to you? Of all the kids in this city who’ve gotten hurt or died, you picked him. Why are you coming after me?’ He realized he was still sweating from Nuñez’s office.
‘You may think you know me, but you don’t,’ she said.
‘But I’m closing in on you, right? Instead of me walking into my office and finding you, you walked into the house Raba Lisle shares with her boyfriend and found me.’
‘You shouldn’t have gone there. She’s innocent.’
‘You put her in the middle when you sent her to pick me out of a lineup.’
‘That wasn’t my idea. Leave her alone.’
‘Can’t do that.’
‘I’m doing this because I have to,’ she said. ‘But you seem to like it.’
‘Ha. I hate it.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You’ve got a day and a half,’ she said. ‘Less than that. You’re wasting time.’
‘Is that why you called?’
‘Mengele said you needed a reminder.’
‘Maybe I’m coming after you right now,’ he said. ‘Maybe you think you’re watching me, but I’m really watching you.’
‘Don’t say stupid things,’ she said. ‘Even if you’re thinking them, don’t say them.’
‘I see you riding a bus from Sioux Falls to Chicago. I see you getting as big and bad as the city itself. But I also see a little worm turning inside you – a little idea of yourself from before you slept with Christian, this idea of a kid you once were. We’ve all got those worms. And they hurt, right? They hurt when they turn inside us, and we wish we could pull them out, but we know that they’re life itself and we can’t kill them without killing ourselves.’
‘Yeah, you talk stupid,’ she said. ‘Maybe Mengele will speed up the clock. Maybe if you check on Dominick Stevens right now, he’s already dead, and Mengele has set it up so it looks a hundred percent like you did it.’
‘Nope. I’m done with that. From now on, I’m coming after you – you and the man you’re with.’
‘You’re wasting time, and you’re going to get hurt,’ she said, and she hung up.
So he talked to the dead line – talked because he couldn’t help talking and because talking seemed to focus his thoughts after his loss of control with Nuñez. ‘What did Dominick Stevens do? Something more than sleeping with Bicho’s girlfriend and getting her pregnant? Is this about more than hurt feelings? Does Mengele even exist? Is he Hugo Nuñez? Can anyone explain what’s going on?’
Then he dialed Venus Johnson at the Harrison Street Police Station. She answered his question before he could ask it. ‘I didn’t see it. It’s missing.’
‘How does a case file go missing?’ he said. ‘Especially for a big-story death like Bicho Rodriguez?’
‘It happens. It could be at the courts. Someone could’ve pulled it for the DCFS and never put it back. Maybe there’s a lawsuit.’
‘I’m tired of you and Peters treating me like an idiot,’ he said.
‘Don’t get weird. You were a cop for long enough to know it’s as sloppy here as anywhere else.’
‘Yeah, but the slop keeps landing on me. I asked for a little favor.’
‘It isn’t so little – you were a cop long enough to know that too. I could get slapped for just talking about sharing a file with you. If I asked others about it, they would ask about me.’
‘I’ll trade you for the trouble,’ he said. ‘Christian Felbanks’s—’
‘I don’t trade. That’s not how it works.’
Kelson gave her the information anyway. ‘Felbanks’s parents are gone. There’s blood in the sink at his condo.’
She took a sharp breath. ‘Jesus, you’re like an infected thumb, Kelson. Just talking to you gives me stabbing pains. How do you know they’re gone?’
‘A friend of mine went there last night.’
‘Last night? And you and your friend didn’t think you should call it in?’
‘I figured you’d blame me for it. Every time I call something in, I end up in lockup.’
‘Sounds reasonable from my end. The city’s safer that way – and quieter. Do I want to know the name of your friend?’
‘Probably not. It’s—’
‘Don’t. Not if it makes my life messier. We’ll check the condo, and if we need to talk to your friend, I’ll tell you.’
‘I need Bicho’s file,’ he said.
‘And I need a job where I don’t have to deal with infected thumbs like you. But you know what? It ain’t happening.’
When they hung up, he called Greg Toselli. Last time they talked, Toselli was having a bad morning and recommended that Kelson either hurt Stevens or take the redhead out of the game by any means. Now, when Toselli picked up the phone, he seemed to be having a better day, and Kelson told him, ‘I found out the redhead’s name. Doreen Felbanks. She’s the cousin of the first victim.’
‘Cool,’ Toselli said. ‘You want me to go with you to talk to her?’
‘You mean, take her out of it?’
‘I mean, whatever’s necessary.’
‘I don’t know how to find her,’ Kelson said. ‘Anyway, I thought you wanted to stay away from this.’
‘No, I said I wouldn’t let you drag both of us down. You know I’ll help you off the clock.’
‘Yeah, but the clock’s spinning. It’s as messed-up as my head, and I don’t know what’s on the clock or off. This Mengele guy is putting me in bed with these people. Everything’s collapsing on itself. I—’
Toselli interrupted as if to save Kelson from himself again. ‘So, what do you want me to do?’
‘Right. I asked Dan Peters’s partner to look at the file, but she says it’s missing. Peters has cuffed me and thrown me in the back of a cruiser every chance he’s gotten, and now his partner’s playing sort of nice but the result is the same.’
‘He’s a tight-ass, but he’s clean,’ Toselli said. ‘I hear the same about his partner. They’ve got limits and they stay inside them. That comes from too little time on the street. But sometimes you’ve got to go around the system. You know that and so do I.’
‘You still won’t hunt down Bicho’s file?’
‘Give me a call when you locate the redhead. Cut it at the root.’
Kelson promised to call when he had something.
‘Cover your ass,’ Toselli told him. ‘You’ve only got one.’
Even before the sun dropped below the top of the low-rise building across the street, Kelson locked his office door and went out to the parking garage. As he pulled on to the street and again a half mile from his office, he looked in his rearview mirror and saw a blue Buick Regal a couple of car lengths behind him, but the afternoon sun kept him from seeing who was in the car, and when he slowed for a red light, it peeled into an alleyway by a dry cleaner.
‘Don’t start,’ he said, and drove back to his apartment.
His head ached, and as Payday and Painter’s Lane rubbed against his ankles, he popped a double dose of Percocet. ‘Time hurts too,’ he told Payday, and scooped her up to his chest, where she purred and kneaded his skin through his shirt. He asked her, ‘What do you say, do I call Nancy?’ If Doreen Felbanks was telling the truth, the man would go after Nancy and Sue Ellen within twenty-four hours – unless he killed Dominick Stevens. Which he wouldn’t do. ‘Tell her what?’ he asked Payday. ‘Take Sue Ellen out of school, pack their bags, and run? She’d never do it, never go. She’d laugh at me, say I was crying wolf. Or say she would kick the man’s ass. Might do it too.’ He scratched Payday’s little skull and said, ‘Infected thumb? More like a toothache. Nancy knows what to do. Yank it. Tough. Never mess with a dentist.’ The double dose of Percocet fishtailed through his arteries, and he felt a pleasant, dizzying warmth. ‘The world is what it is, that’s all,’ he told Payday. He felt like lying down. He went to the kitchen and popped another pill. Then he stretched out on his bed and waited for the room to melt.
He got his best night’s sleep since Doreen sent him to Christian Felbanks’s condo. Eleven hours straight. He would’ve gotten even more except for the kittens’ mewling. That and the knock on the door.