At Kelson’s apartment, the search team had come and gone, getting through the door without breaking the frame, even locking it behind them when they left. They’d closed the kittens in the bathroom, rifled through the clothes in the closet, pulled back the bed covers, and rattled the kitchen drawers. ‘Enough to give me an aneurysm,’ Kelson said as he gazed at the mess.
The kittens kept away from him, as if they could sense it. ‘You guys want a Percocet?’ he asked because he badly wanted one himself and wasn’t going to take it. ‘Too much to do,’ he said. ‘Too little time. Too many, too few.’ He glared at Painter’s Lane, who mewled at him. ‘I’m babbling like a bald baby.’ Painter’s Lane moved tentatively toward him. He picked up the kitten, petted her, and set her back on the rug, afraid of what he might do, the razor’s edge of a headache seeming to divide his skull bone. ‘Poor Mrs Felbanks,’ he said.
He went into the bathroom, stared at the vial of Percocet in the medicine cabinet, and told it, ‘I’m not your bitch.’ He closed the cabinet and laughed at the man in the mirror. ‘Ha,’ he told him. ‘I’m everyone’s bitch. And so are you.’
But he managed to get out of the bathroom without sucking the pills from the vial. ‘Get on with it,’ he said to Payday, and he pulled out his phone and started to dial Toselli’s number. Then stopped. He stared at the phone as if it was an oracle. He ended the call. ‘Some things, once you say them, you can’t unsay,’ he told phone. ‘Not that that’s stopped me before. Maybe nothing I ever said was something to say.’ He stared at the phone. It said nothing. So he dialed Rodman instead.
‘The Felbankses are dead,’ he told him.
‘That sucks.’
‘Dan Peters woke me with the news this morning. He had a team roll my apartment, looking for evidence that I killed them.’
‘That sucks,’ he said again.
‘Do you have anything else to say?’
‘Yeah, Peters looks dirty in all of this. I talked to a Rogers Park dealer last night. He said Bicho sold “recycled.” Recycled, as in taken off the street by a cop or stolen from evidence or never cataloged – and then fed back to the street through Bicho. That’s what he said.’
‘Did the dealer say anything about Peters?’
‘No, I don’t think he knew who. But Peters has had a hard-on for you since Christian Felbanks died, so why not?’
Kelson said, ‘He seemed to take me seriously about Doreen for the first time this morning, but he didn’t like me talking about Bicho.’
‘Then treat him like he’s rotten unless you learn different. What are you going to do now?’
‘I need to talk to Nancy and convince her to get Sue Ellen out of the city. I won’t touch Dominick Stevens, and so they’re next on the list.’
‘Maybe you should go with them. No shame in running away if someone’s got bigger guns than you.’
‘Who would feed the kittens?’
‘Take yourself off the table. Change the game. Keep yourself from getting hurt.’
‘How about you?’ Kelson said. ‘What’s next?’
‘I’m going to take Dominick Stevens out to lunch.’
‘What’re you talking about?’
‘Here’s all you need to know – I’m doing this for you. For him too, but mainly for you. You understand that?’
‘No, you’re confusing me.’
‘Good,’ Rodman said.
Kelson drove to the Healthy Smiles Dental Clinic.
‘Toselli,’ he said.
‘Do I believe it?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Dr P had warned that his perceptions might swerve from reality.
‘I hope so,’ he said.
Nancy’s waiting room was painted in a safari theme with big-toothed animals grinning from behind jungle foliage and banana-eating monkeys hanging from the branches.
The receptionist greeted Kelson with a smile as big as the shy hippo’s. But when he asked to see his ex-wife, she said. ‘That could be a problem. She’s doing a cavity.’
Kelson said he had an emergency, and she sent word back. Fifteen minutes later, Nancy came into the waiting room, wearing safety glasses.
The waiting parents looked scandalized when he told her about the methhead prostitute who’d given him details that made him think Doreen Felbanks or the man who was running her meant to harm anyone connected to him – and that meant Nancy and Sue Ellen. Then Nancy jabbed a dental pick at Kelson’s chest as she berated him for putting their daughter in danger. As he expected, she refused to flee. She would pick up Sue Ellen from school herself. She would use extra caution. But she wouldn’t allow Kelson’s selfishness to disrupt their lives.
‘Selfishness?’ he said. ‘I got shot in the head.’
A woman with twin blond-haired boys gathered their toys and scurried from the office.
‘I feel bad for you,’ Nancy said. ‘We all do. But that doesn’t change the fact that the rest of us have lives.’
‘So blunt,’ he said. ‘So cold.’ He fought the urge but said, ‘And still so sexy.’
She poked the dental pick at him. ‘Leave.’