‘Are you fucking crazy?’ Marty said when Kelson told him Stanley Javinsky’s request. ‘No fucking way.’
‘That’s what I told him,’ Kelson said, but then he mentioned that Javinsky killed Ramsey Garner – who’d set up Victor Almonte with the bomb that ripped Neto apart – and then chucked Garner out of his car like an empty beer can. ‘So he kind of got revenge for you – kind of.’
‘Ah, fuck,’ Marty said.
‘Which means?’
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
‘I thought you might feel this way,’ Kelson said.
‘If he tries anything, I swear I’ll kill him,’ Marty said.
‘If he doesn’t kill you first.’
When Kelson knocked on the basement apartment door a half hour later, Marty opened it looking angry, but he softened at the sight of Javinsky the way twins separated at birth sometimes feel an immediate affinity when reunited as adults. Within five minutes, Marty offered to heat a can of pork ’n’ beans for the man.
Kelson told Marty, ‘You know he almost choked me to death.’
Marty gazed at Kelson as if he might have more to object to than that and, when he didn’t, said, ‘Which one of us is perfect?’
Genevieve Bower stared at Marty and Javinsky warily and retreated to the far end of the leatherette sofa. Kelson sat down with her and asked, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I made mistakes,’ she said. ‘Big ones. And now I’m holed up with a couple of psychopaths.’
‘You dated Marty. You know he’s a good guy, in his way.’
‘For a psychopath. I want this to stop. It’s gone too far. I’m done.’
‘What do you mean? What are you done with?’
‘Can you arrange a meeting with Harry and Sylvia? I don’t want anything from them. I just want my life back. I don’t have the thumb drive. They can look for it and keep it – I can’t do this anymore.’
Javinsky had started listening. Now his sandpaper voice said, ‘It’s too late. When I found you, I was supposed to do you.’
‘Do me?’ She looked ready for another bottle of strawberry vodka.
‘No one’s doing anyone,’ Kelson said.
‘I won’t do you,’ Javinsky said to her. ‘But they’ll send others. For you. And me. Harold makes up his mind.’
Genevieve Bower looked at Kelson. ‘Arrange a meeting. Tell them I want to come in.’
‘I’m with Squirt on this one,’ he said. ‘It’s a bad idea.’
‘But I get to decide,’ she said.
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘You hired me to do a job, and along with any job I protect a client. So I can’t turn you over to the Cranes, even if you think it would work out.’
‘But I could fire you,’ she said.
‘You could. Another bad idea.’
Marty told her, ‘You don’t want to fire Sam. He comes off dumb but he knows his fucking shit.’
‘Thank you, Marty,’ Kelson said and, to Genevieve Bower, ‘Give me more time.’
‘How much? A day? A week?’ She frowned. ‘More?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Give him a day,’ Marty said.
‘What happens in a day?’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ Kelson said, ‘what’s a day?’
‘Hell if I know,’ Marty said. ‘But what kind of detective are you if you can’t make something happen by then?’
Genevieve Bower agreed to a day but only after Marty said she could sleep in his bedroom with the door locked, while he and Javinsky slept on the front room floor.
Back at his office an hour later, Kelson worried about Marty’s promise that he would make something happen. ‘Truth is,’ he told his KelTec, ‘I’m tired – as if truth gives a damn. About me.’ He ran his finger the length of the pistol barrel. ‘As if it should shiver. As if it should burst with pleasure.’
He set the pistol on his desk, pulled out his phone, and dialed Venus Johnson’s number at the Harrison Street Police Station. Her phone rang three times and went to voicemail. He hung up.
He checked the KelTec magazine. Then he held the gun between his flattened hands as if he was praying with it. He held it so the barrel faced him. He closed one eye and stared with the other into the tiny tunnel with its enormous darkness. He felt a shiver of fear and pleasure.
Then his phone rang.
He jumped. ‘Holy shit.’ He set the pistol on his desk, the barrel pointing at the door.
His phone rang again. Caller ID said Nancy.
He breathed hard – in and out – and answered. ‘Hiya.’
‘Two questions,’ she said.
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Why did you buy Sue Ellen fancy sneakers, and why did you send them to her at my clinic?’
‘Fancy sneakers?’
‘Pink high-tops studded with stars. Jimmy Choos. Do you really think she’ll wear them?’
Kelson’s mind raced, and he yelled, ‘Don’t touch them.’
‘Why?’
‘They might …’ He didn’t know what.
‘I tried them on. They fit. Did you realize Sue Ellen and I have the same size feet? Our little girl is growing up.’
‘Dammit – take them off. Wash your feet.’
Nancy had perfected her exasperated tone years ago. ‘And floss between my toes? You know you’re sounding more than a little crazy again. The shoes were a nice thought. Misguided for an eleven-year-old, but nice.’
‘I didn’t send them.’
‘The packing slip says you did.’
‘They’re a threat,’ he said.
‘Sneakers are a threat? Who sends sneakers as a threat?’
‘The Winsins,’ he said, ‘probably the Winsins. It’s a double threat – sending you the shoes for Sue Ellen.’
‘Do you mind if I keep them?’
Kelson explained the situation as well as he could. When he finished, she still sounded calm. She almost always did. Her fearlessness had drawn him to her when they first met – he found it sexy. Now he found it maddening, and told her so.
‘I won’t throw out perfectly good shoes,’ she said.
‘It’s not the shoes,’ Kelson said. ‘It’s what they mean – what the Winsins mean them to mean.’
‘Shoes can’t mean anything,’ she said. ‘If the Winsins show up at the house, I’ll kick them in the head with them.’
When they hung up, Kelson stared at the pistol on his desk as if it threatened him as much as Jimmy Choo sneakers. So he strapped it back under the desktop and said, ‘Better, I guess.’
Then, for the first time in days, a piercing headache started in the bone above his left eye and needled backward. He swore at it, as if he could chase it out of his head. His left eye started to twitch. He took his vial of Percocet from the middle drawer, unscrewed the cap, and swallowed a little blue tablet. ‘Take that, Dr P,’ he said.
He closed his eyes, caressed his forehead, breathed in deep, and breathed out. He imagined clouds scudding across the sky over the skyscrapers in the city. ‘Nice clouds,’ he said. Then, as the medicine did its thing, his phone rang again. He returned the vial to the drawer and checked who was calling. This time caller ID said Zoe Simmons – JollyOllie’s high school friend who lived next door to his gay cousin Rick.
Kelson answered, ‘Hiya,’ again.
‘Right. Do you still want the thumb drive?’
Kelson felt the same kind of jolt as when he’d stared into the KelTec pistol barrel. ‘You’ve got it?’
‘Rick’s boyfriend had it. I took it from him.’
‘You at home?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Don’t let anyone else in. Don’t even answer the phone. I’ll be right there.’