A wet March wind was blowing. It smelled of the lake and of the old clay soil under the city and of the people who lived on top of it. Kelson flagged a cab and rode back to his office. He ran upstairs, grabbed his KelTec, and checked the magazine. Then he called Rodman and told him about Greg Toselli.
‘I never liked that boy,’ Rodman said.
‘That’s it?’
‘Nothing surprises me anymore.’
So Kelson went downstairs again and drove home.
As he passed the front door of his building, the blue Buick Regal was idling at the curb. This time he saw the driver and a passenger – the two men from Hugo Nuñez’s office.
Kelson stopped a few car lengths beyond the Buick. ‘Tracking me like an animal,’ he said. He set his KelTec in his lap and shifted into reverse. He stopped again when his passenger window faced the other driver. The man stared at him with cold eyes, made his finger and thumb into a gun, and pointed at Kelson.
Kelson lowered his passenger window and signaled the man to roll his down. When the man did, Kelson said, ‘Never pretend to shoot at someone with impulse control issues.’
So the man picked up a pistol from the side of his seat and aimed it at Kelson. He said, ‘I’d love to do it, but Hugo wants you for himself.’
Kelson scooped the KelTec from his lap and aimed back.
‘Hilarious,’ the driver said, and rolled back up his window.
So Kelson parked in the lot and sprinted to the building vestibule. He checked the lobby and mailroom before getting on the elevator. On his floor, he wiggled his door handle before putting his key in the lock.
He opened the door and slipped inside.
And he shrieked.
Doreen Felbanks lay on his bed, petting Painter’s Lane. Payday was curled against her belly, purring loudly.
‘What the hell,’ Kelson said.
‘Shh,’ Doreen said. She was lying on her side, her head propped on an elbow, like an old painting of a whore, except she wore black Capri pants and a black cashmere sweater. A pair of red high heels lay on the carpet.
Kelson scanned the apartment for other intruders. He forced himself to go to the kitchen doorway. He forced himself to look into the bathroom and behind the shower curtain.
He went back into the main room with his KelTec in his hand.
‘Where is he?’
‘Oh, put that away. You aren’t going to shoot me.’ She sounded drunk or high.
‘Watch me. Where is he?’
‘What if you hit the cat?’
‘I’ll risk it. Where’s Toselli?’
‘So you do know. A lot of people underestimate you. I did at first. Then the cops broke down his door this morning. He said you must’ve tipped them to who he was.’
‘The cops told me about him. Where is he?’ He stood away from the window and kept his back to the wall.
‘That’s the funny thing,’ she said. ‘After the raid, he came to my apartment and said it was time to clean up. That meant getting rid of me – and you too, though I think he always planned to kill us sooner or later.’ Something in her expression seemed pained or sick. ‘I ran into my bathroom and went out the window to the fire escape. He shot up the bathroom door.’ Her lips quivered, though she could’ve been faking it.
‘Nope. Not this time.’ Kelson laughed at her – a forced laugh. ‘You’ve lied and set me up. You’ve almost gotten me killed. Why would I believe you? Where is he?’
Slowly and with effort, she rolled away from him on to her back. Blood stained the bedspread. Her black sweater looked wet.
Kelson moved toward her involuntarily. ‘Oh, shit.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I said. I almost got out the window.’
He stopped inches from the bed. ‘Let me see.’
She peeled her sweater up from her hip and shuddered. Blood spread from her ribcage and belly around her back.
‘Why?’ Kelson asked.
‘Same reason as every man I’ve ever known. He was done with me.’
‘You need help.’
‘You know what, he never lied to me. Never pretended I was anyone else. If I did what he told me to, he kept his word. We had an understanding – he never hung Christian’s or Raima Minhas’s killings on me. I didn’t think he’d shoot me, though.’
Kelson pulled out his phone and started dialing 911.
‘No,’ she said, with strange urgency.
‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.
‘Good eyes.’
‘You’ll die.’
‘I don’t think so.’
He started dialing again.
She pushed herself up to sitting, though she almost collapsed into herself. ‘I’m leaving.’
‘Why did you come?’
‘To warn you,’ she said.
‘Liar.’
She tried to stand. Couldn’t.
‘Dammit,’ he said, and shoved his phone in his pocket. He went into the bathroom, soaked a towel, and returned. ‘Lie down.’
She did, with a faint smile. ‘I knew this about you.’
‘Shut up.’ He cleaned under her ribcage.
‘I knew you were a sucker.’
‘I said, shut up.’ He went back to the bathroom, wrung the towel over the sink, and wet it again. Then he cleaned her hip and back. The cloth tugged against a flap of skin on her back, and she groaned. The bullet had gone straight through from her belly.
When she caught her breath, she said, ‘People keep hurting me if I let them.’
The wound bled freely. He cleaned it with the towel again and made a compress.
She said, ‘And you scared Greg. You’ve got half a brain, and you scared him.’ She winced as he pushed the towel into the wound. ‘By surviving,’ she said. ‘By staying … clean. By being’ – she gasped when he put more pressure on the compress – ‘a sucker.’
He bandaged her as well as he could, and then he took out his phone again and started dialing.
‘I’ll walk out of here before they come,’ she said.
‘You wouldn’t make it to the elevator.’
‘I made it here.’
‘You had more blood in you then.’
‘No hospital,’ she said. ‘Nowhere Greg or anyone else can get me. I’ll give you what you want. You give me what I want.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Depends. You think I’ll live?’
‘I’ve seen people come through worse,’ he said.
‘You, for instance.’
‘Me. But I also knew a dealer with a flesh wound who died of sepsis. He refused to go to a hospital too.’
‘Help me get out of Chicago. That’s all I want.’
‘Back to Sioux City?’
‘If you make me laugh, I’ll die right here.’
‘And what do you think I want?’
‘Don’t you even know?’ Again the faint smile. ‘You want to make things happen,’ she said. ‘You want to outsmart people. You want them to love you.’
‘And you can make that happen?’
‘Maybe a little, if I help you catch Greg.’
‘You want that too – me to take him down before he takes you down.’
‘Sure. And before he takes you down too.’
‘Just one problem,’ he said. ‘You helped him kill Christian and his mom and dad. You helped him kill Raima Minhas.’
‘Greg killed them. He set me up the same as you. I had reasons to hurt Christian and the others. And I got Christian to steal drugs from the pharmacy. I did that much. But Greg killed him and the others. If I didn’t help him pin the killings on you, he would shine a light on me for the cops. With my background, I’d go down hard.’
‘So you tried to send me down instead?’
‘I’m a sucker too.’
‘No, you aren’t. You’ve never been, or if you were, it’s been a long time since you got over it.’
‘Do I look like I could kill anyone?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Go to hell.’ She tried to get up. She almost made it.
‘So you’re just his tool?’ he said. ‘Nothing more?’
‘I didn’t say that. He wanted all of me. He wanted the parts no one can buy. The parts no one should give.’
‘And now he’s trying to kill you.’
‘See? I’m a sucker.’
He stared at her. ‘All right.’
She looked surprised. ‘Yeah?’
‘I won’t turn you in yet. You’ll help me go after Toselli. But if you lie again – if you mess with me – I won’t bother taking you to the hospital. I’ll dump you with the cops.’
‘All right,’ she said.
‘Then take off your clothes.’
She gave him a look.
‘I’m not taking you anywhere until I check you for wires. Toselli’s run you from every angle. Strip.’
She tried lifting her sweater, but the pain made sweat break from her forehead.
So he did it for her. When she was naked, he ran his fingers up the seams of her pants and sweater. He dropped them on the carpet and checked her shoes. Then he took out his phone again and dialed.
‘You bastard,’ she said.
But he called Rodman’s apartment. When the big man answered, Kelson asked, ‘Can you get Cindi to come home from work?’
‘What’s up?’
‘I have Doreen Felbanks. Shot in the ribs.’
‘You want to bring her to my apartment?’
‘She says Toselli forced her to do what she did.’
‘And you believe her, why?’
‘I’m figuring this out as I go.’
‘Best thing you could do is get away.’
‘I know that.’
Rodman was silent for a while, then said, ‘Why would you want to do this?’
Kelson said, ‘Because she’s really hot?’
‘Not funny. Tell her Cindi and I don’t like blood on the rugs.’
Before taking Doreen down the hallway to the elevator, Kelson spread a pack of sliced ham on the kitchen floor for the kittens and filled three bowls with water. Then he tried to get Doreen to take one of his Percocet.
‘I don’t do that shit,’ she said. ‘It’ll kill you.’
‘Like it killed Raima Minhas?’ he said.
‘Greg did that.’
‘No lies,’ he said.
‘He did it,’ she said again. ‘I got the pills from Christian – but Greg used them.’
‘Fine,’ he said, ‘go drug-free – let it hurt – die from shock.’
When they rode down and stepped out to the street, Kelson waved at Nuñez’s men. They didn’t wave back, but the driver started the Buick, and they coasted after Kelson and Doreen as they drove south through the city.