‘What’re you doing here?’ Kelson said, and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Why aren’t you at your mom’s?’
‘I needed to feed the kittens. Mom said they locked you up again.’ She held Payday in her arms. The kitten purred like a little engine. ‘Someone needs to be responsible. Payday has a cough.’ With her long black hair, Sue Ellen looked more like Kelson’s ex, Nancy, than him.
‘A cough?’
She squeezed the kitten to show him. Payday purred louder.
‘Cat’s don’t cough,’ Kelson said.
‘I think Painter’s Lane gave her a cold,’ Sue Ellen said, and at its name the other kitten emerged from the kitchenette. ‘Or she might be starving.’
Kelson lived in a bare-walled studio two miles from the house he once shared with Nancy and Sue Ellen. He went to the kitchenette and peeked in. Sue Ellen had filled two cereal bowls to the top with Friskies Surfin’ & Turfin’.
‘So you’re running around the city after dark but you want me to feel guilty,’ he said.
‘Yep.’
‘Grab your stuff,’ Kelson said. ‘I’m taking you back to your mom’s.’
‘What are you doing tonight?’
‘Driving you to your mom’s, thanks to you.’
‘Thanks to the kittens I saved.’
As they drove to Nancy’s house, she asked the question she asked almost every time they got into a car together. ‘Can we play Stump Dad?’ She’d invented the game when she realized Kelson’s cross-wired brain made him answer every question she asked.
‘No.’
His answer mattered little. ‘Next time they put you in jail, can I visit you?’
‘There won’t be a next time,’ he said. Then, ‘I hope.’ Then, ‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘Because Mom says I can’t. But I want to see what it’s like.’
‘It smells.’
‘If you could be any kind of fish, what would you be?’
‘Enough.’ Then, ‘A tiger shark. And I’d eat anyone who asked annoying questions.’
After dropping off Sue Ellen – and explaining the ass-in-pizza, night-in-jail, and starving-kitten episodes to Nancy, stopping only when she closed the door in his face – Kelson turned back toward home but then decided, since the kittens had eaten, to go to his office.
His desktop was clean. A gray metal cabinet stood against the wall behind his desk chair, out of sight unless he turned to look at it. A plain light fixture stuck from the ceiling. The walls, like his apartment walls, were white and bare except for a framed eight-by-ten picture of Sue Ellen and another of Payday and Painter’s Lane. The pictures also hung behind his desk chair. Ever since he took a bullet in the head, clutter gave him headaches bad enough to knock him to the floor, which, in his office, he’d covered with gray all-weather carpet. Percocet helped – and some days he dropped six or eight blue tablets – but as an ex-narcotics cop he knew the dangers.
Now he checked his guns – the Springfield XD-S he kept in the bottom desk drawer and the KelTec he strapped under the desktop. He popped the magazine from each gun, checked that it was loaded, rolled it in his palm, and snapped it back into the pistol housing. As he checked the Springfield, he said, ‘Mmmm,’ as if the gun soothed him, and, catching himself in the feeling, added, ‘that’s just – odd.’
He put the guns away and took his laptop from the top drawer. When it booted up, he spent a half hour on the Genevieve Bower job. The JollyOllie.com website showed Jeremy Oliver’s menu of DJ services. Oliver promised to ‘bring out the boogie’ at weddings, bar mitzvahs, corporate events, and birthday parties. He could do special effects like strobe lights, ‘Dancing on a Cloud’ dry ice, pin-spot lighting, and fireworks. He listed his hundred favorite Eighties party songs, leading with Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’, and Van Halen’s ‘Jump’. His JollyOllie blog included images of Eighties Camaros and Corvettes, Bruce Springsteen album covers, and girls with big hair. Kelson clicked one of the video links. A middle-aged man sporting a white tuxedo spun his date to ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ under lighting suited for a high school prom. ‘Ain’t Joan Jett,’ Kelson said when he froze the video. He clicked on the video of a corporate holiday party and watched office workers let loose as they did the Macarena.
He tried the business phone number from the contact page. A recorded voice – Latin accented and enthusiastic – identified itself as JollyOllie and promised a ‘big party for your next big occasion’ if you would leave your name and number. Kelson left his name and number, then dialed again, this time Oliver’s private cell number, which Genevieve Bower had given him – knowing that if he reached Oliver he would have to phrase his conversation just right to avoid making the man ask the wrong questions. On the third ring, an unenthusiastic Latin voice answered, ‘Yeah?’
‘Jeremy Oliver?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I want the Jimmy Choos.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t make me say “Jimmy Choos” again.’
‘Who told you I’ve got Jimmy Choos?’
‘See?’ Kelson said. ‘That’s exactly what I didn’t want to do. Genevieve Bower.’
The man’s voice got sly. ‘Tell her if she wants her stuff, I need cash.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ Kelson said. ‘You give back the shoes, I won’t drop a brick on you.’
‘A brick?’
‘His name’s DeMarcus Rodman. Let’s meet tomorrow – to talk in person.’
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ the man said. ‘Why don’t you fuck off?’ He hung up.
‘Progress,’ Kelson said.
Before shutting his office for the night, he googled G&G Private Equity. The website told him nothing worth knowing. The site was done up in black, brown, and white. ‘I smell mahogany,’ Kelson told it. He googled Sylvia Crane, Harold Crane, and Chip Voudreaux, the people who Marty LeCoeur said had tried to hire him. He found only a single hit, for Chip Voudreaux, who appeared on a list of sponsors of a charity called Second Chances. ‘Like ghosts,’ Kelson said. ‘Hard to stay that invisible. Pay someone to wipe the internet clean of them.’