Kelson went home and cooked spaghetti. He poured a glass of wine and popped a Percocet. He told the kittens about his trip to Emma Almonte’s house in the morning. He told them about Venus Johnson dragging him down to the Harrison Street Police Station. He told them about his visit with Tom Runeski and Runeski’s baby girl in the afternoon. He told them about Genevieve Bower’s reappearance.
But when he told them about his meeting with Sylvia Crane and Chip Voudreaux at G&G, he added a warning. ‘Be careful. I’ve known people like them. When they get caught, everyone talks about their greed. But the money’s just a side benefit. I think they get off on hurting people.’
After he ate, he let Payday and Painter’s Lane lick the butter off the remaining spaghetti. ‘Sure, live it up,’ he told them.
He poured more wine, and when his phone rang, he said, ‘Screw it,’ but caller ID said DeMarcus Rodman, so he picked up and told Rodman about his trip to G&G.
Rodman seemed distracted. ‘The doctor says Neto should make it through the night, but he doubts he’ll get through tomorrow. Janet’s at the hospital. I came home to shower.’
‘What then?’
‘I’ll hit the streets,’ Rodman said. ‘Let’s say Victor Almonte really did blow up the library. The questions haven’t changed. Why’d he do it? Why that library? Why an hour before closing? How’d he get there? Where’d he get the explosives? Who saw him? Who talked with him? Someone always sees and talks. I’ll go out tonight. I’ll go back out tomorrow. We do what we’re good at, right? I’ll find every bastard who knows anything about Almonte. I’m lousy at sitting in a hospital waiting for a kid to die.’
‘You’re a good man, DeMarcus.’
‘I don’t know about the “good” part,’ Rodman said.
Ten minutes after they hung up, Kelson’s phone clacked to tell him someone had sent a text. He ignored it and poured more wine. After another two glasses and another Percocet, he checked the message.
Nancy had texted, telling him she had an early meeting with her staff at the Healthy Smiles Dental Clinic and asking him to give Sue Ellen a ride to school. ‘No need to own me if you can rent me,’ he said. ‘Whatever that means.’ He texted back, Of course.
When he slept, he dreamed of the seventeen-year-old named Bicho who shot him in the head during a drug bust, gunfire ringing off the alley walls of an icy February night. In the dream, Bicho ate dinner with Kelson and Sue Ellen at Taquería Uptown. Bicho ordered a margarita and became angry when the restaurant wouldn’t serve him. When Kelson explained that the counterman was showing no disrespect – the restaurant just didn’t have a liquor license – Bicho wouldn’t hear reason. He pulled out a black revolver and threatened to shoot the counterman. But then Sue Ellen kissed Bicho on the mouth, and he put away the gun and ate his sopa de mariscos.
Kelson woke from the dream in a panic, but after doing his breathing exercises, he closed his eyes again and slept peacefully.
At eight a.m. the next morning, his ringing phone woke him.
‘I thought you were picking up Sue Ellen,’ Nancy said when he answered.
‘Oh shit,’ he said.
‘Bad answer,’ Nancy said.
‘Ten minutes,’ he said.
‘Dammit,’ she said.
Eleven minutes later, Kelson pulled to the curb at Nancy’s house. Nancy and Sue Ellen were waiting on the front porch.
Kelson jumped out. ‘I’m sorry. I—’
‘Daddy.’ Sue Ellen grinned as if he could do no wrong.
Nancy glared at Kelson and said, ‘Go.’
After dropping Sue Ellen at Hayt Elementary, Kelson drove to Rodman’s Bronzeville apartment. Rodman, just back from talking with men and women who owned the streets and city parks after midnight, came to the door from the kitchen. His girlfriend Cindi, after a nightshift at Rush Medical, sat on the couch under the portrait of Malcolm X.
Rodman gave Kelson a mug of coffee, brought a cup of tea to Cindi, went back to the kitchen, and scrambled a half dozen eggs. When the three of them sat together at the dining table, Rodman forked a bite into his mouth and said, ‘Emma Almonte lied.’ He washed down the food with coffee. ‘Two blocks from her house, there’s a strip of auto body shops, a metal casting company, and a hair salon. A couple men sleep under the awning at an empty warehouse. A couple more drink all night in an alley next to the warehouse. The drunks said they never saw Victor Almonte. So I bought them a bottle of Smirnoff and hung out awhile. Then they said maybe they saw him some nights – maybe they drank with him sometimes. But Emma Almonte told us he liked to be alone – locked himself in his room. So I shook the sleepers awake and asked them about our man. Sure, they said, they knew Victor. One of them – a skinny guy – said Victor spooked him, talking about what he did in Afghanistan, what he’d seen, what he wanted to do to people who hated veterans. But the other guy said Victor was cool – he just had issues like everyone else. Point is, Victor went out and made the rounds, even though Emma Almonte told us he’d gone a hundred percent homebody.’ Rodman paused to eat a piece of toast. ‘Next I went to Rogers Park, by the library,’ he said. ‘Around the corner, there’s a school with a playground – great place to get high at three in the morning on a spring night. Two guys and a girl I talked to never saw Victor Almonte. But they pointed me to someone else. So I went over by the railroad tracks a block from the library, and I kicked around in the weeds and bushes on the embankment until I found a little camp. The guy there must’ve been about a hundred years old, but he was sharp, real sharp. Nine-to-five, regular as a banker, he shakes a can for nickels outside the library. He said he saw Victor Almonte twice, once on the day the library blew up and once about a week before. He remembered because the first time Victor stuffed five bucks in his can, and the second time he gave him a twenty, a one, and a pocket of change – the old guy figured it was everything Victor had. The first time, Victor poked around outside the library, went in for a few minutes, came out, and poked around again. The second time, he went right in and didn’t come back until the paramedics wheeled him out on a gurney.’
Rodman poured another cup of coffee and said, ‘That’s it.’
‘So he did it,’ Cindi said.
‘Looks like,’ Rodman said.
Kelson said, ‘But, as you said, why?’
Cindi looked tired. ‘He comes back from his tour hurt. More in the head than the body. He can’t sleep – spends too much time alone – sneaks out now and then when his sister’s in bed or at work. Maybe he goes on the internet or watches TV and sees something that angers him in Rogers Park. Or maybe a girl from Rogers Park broke his heart once. Don’t overthink it, ’cause maybe you’ll never know. Every night at Rush, we get patients who’re so broken inside, the stitches we sew them up with and the pills we give them for the pain don’t even start to heal them. If we ask for their story, they take us to crazy places. Sometimes we’re afraid to ask. Sometimes we don’t want to know.’
Kelson said, ‘Where’d Almonte get the explosives? You think he traded the alley drunks a bottle of Smirnoff for them? Everything about this blast makes it look like he targeted a place and time – maybe specific people – and went after them. Unless we find out he thought ISIS wrote library books or the reference librarian ran off with his best friend, we need to know the story.’
Cindi said, ‘You know how many times I’ve heard parents and wives and husbands bawling when the doctors gave them the news and asking, “Why, why, why?”’
Rodman downed his coffee, sat back in his chair, and crossed his big arms over his big chest. He said to Kelson, ‘You’re right, though. We need the story.’
‘You all think what you want,’ Cindi said. ‘You haven’t seen what I have. Sometimes when we try to explain the reasons to the parents and wives and husbands, it just makes the hurt worse.’ She carried her plate into the kitchen, then disappeared into the bedroom to sleep.
‘She’s wiped out,’ Rodman said.
‘But she’s right,’ Kelson said. ‘We all disagree and we’re all right.’