Something in the building on Wabash was burning. Smoke snaked from the shattered lobby doors, crossed the sidewalk, and slid into the street. Four firetrucks, six police cruisers, and an ambulance lined the curb. As Kelson and the Winsins ducked under the police tape and walked up the opposite sidewalk, a half dozen firefighters in oxygen masks, helmets, and flame-retardant overalls and jackets stepped through the smoke into the building as if shouldering past an invisible monster. They carried axes and picks, fire extinguishers, and pry bars. Bright lights mounted on the sides of two of the trucks shined on the dark face of the building. A man without a helmet shouted into a handheld radio, and the truck engines rumbled.
For all that, no one seemed in a rush. There was smoke but no visible blaze.
‘A little thing,’ Kelson said.
Christine Winsin stepped into the street, her heels clicking on the pavement, and went to the man with the handheld radio. She looked up at him and spoke, and he looked down at her – as if an odd little bird had landed on the street beside him in the smoky night – and answered. When she came back to Kelson and her brothers, she said, ‘The fire started in some basement rooms. But no one’s there.’
‘Which means the Cranes have them – or they got out before the Cranes came in,’ Kelson said.
David Winsin reached into the satchel and gave him his phone.
‘Right.’ Kelson dialed Rodman’s cell number.
The phone rang once and Rodman answered, saying, ‘Don’t go to Marty’s place.’
‘I’m there right now,’ Kelson said, ‘along with about fifty firefighters – and the Winsins. Are you OK?’
‘The Cranes sent some of their biggest and baddest. But I’m bigger and badder than they are, or at least we were quicker. Marty saw them coming on his security monitor, so we hid in the stairwell while the jerks rode the elevator to the basement. What are you doing with the Winsins?’
‘They got this funny idea that I like people coming into my apartment without knocking. Now they want their missing money. Joke’s on them.’
‘How did they get you to take them to Marty’s?’
Christine Winsin moved close to Kelson. ‘Ask where they are.’
‘Shut up,’ Kelson told her.
David Winsin reached into the satchel again and left his hand there, as if to show Kelson he was aiming his pistol at him.
Kelson turned his back on him. ‘A lot of gun and a little logic,’ he told Rodman. ‘They say they only want their money, and they gave me information that’ll help us get the Cranes.’
‘Dirty money,’ Rodman said, ‘and they see an opportunity because we’ve hurt the Cranes. What did they tell you?’
‘First, Genevieve Bower and Chip Voudreaux tried to steal the G&G money together.’
‘Well, shit.’
‘Second, the Cranes have locked up Voudreaux at Sylvia’s house. Third, Voudreaux wants to go to the cops.’
Christine Winsin inched around Kelson and faced him again. ‘Where are they?’
‘Shh,’ he said, then, to Rodman, ‘did you take Marty’s computer with you?’
‘Hell, yeah – and he’s through to Neto’s account.’
‘It’s up to you whether I bring the Winsins to you,’ Kelson said. ‘If you think it’s a stupid idea, I’ll cross the street and talk with the cops.’
David Winsin stepped around him. He let the pistol barrel peek at Kelson from the top of the satchel.
‘Even your money wouldn’t buy you out of that kind of trouble,’ Kelson told him.
‘Let me talk to Marty and Cindi,’ Rodman said.
Kelson looked at Christine Winsin. ‘Hold on.’
When Rodman came back, he said, ‘What the hell, let’s make it a party. If we don’t like their company, we’ll kick them down the back stairs.’ He told Kelson where they were hiding.
‘In plain sight, as it turns out,’ Kelson said to the Winsins as they drove toward the Bronzeville neighborhood where Rodman and Cindi lived.
Five minutes after they swung into the alley by the Ebenezer Baptist Church and climbed the steps to Rodman’s apartment, the Winsins were haggling with Marty under the gaze of the paintings of Malcolm X, Cindi, and Martin Luther King.
‘You only want what’s yours?’ Marty asked.
Christine Winsin said, ‘Five million, eighty-three thousand, eight hundred and seventy-seven dollars.’
‘What about my commission?’ Marty said.
‘We let you live. Is that enough?’ Christine Winsin said.
‘That and thirty percent,’ he said.
She smiled as if she appreciated the tough little man. ‘Let’s make it an even five million. You keep the eighty-three thousand.’
‘What about the rest of the money?’ he asked.
‘Do what you want with it,’ she said. ‘We want only what’s ours. We’re honest people.’
‘There’s nothing honest about you, honey,’ Marty said.
‘Honorable, then,’ she said.
‘I can work with that,’ he said.
‘How much is the rest?’ Kelson asked.
‘After the five million?’ Marty wiggled his outstretched hand. ‘Another thirty-one or thirty-two – in the neighborhood.’
‘Fancy neighborhood,’ Kelson said.
So Marty plugged in his computer, tapped into Rodman’s Wi-Fi, and thirty minutes later routed five million dollars from Neto’s account – which he’d started calling ‘my account’ – into three separate offshore banks where the Winsins kept money. While Marty worked, the Winsins sipped coffee that Rodman brought from the kitchen. Even Bob Winsin, despite the welt on his face and his swollen eye, looked at ease with his place in the world.
When Marty showed Christine Winsin the adjusted accounts, she sighed and said, ‘All this trouble. Was it necessary?’
‘Shit happens,’ Marty said.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Shit happens. But it mustn’t happen again. I worry that with your abilities and your knowledge of us, you could go into our accounts again and empty them – not only of the money you’ve returned. That mustn’t be the case.’
David Winsin had left his gun in the satchel on the floor by his ankles, but everyone in the room understood the woman’s threat. Marty said, ‘Ma’am, if I wanted to get into your panties, I could. But I believe in honor too.’
She considered him. ‘I guess we’ll have to be satisfied with that.’
Two hours before dawn, she thanked Rodman for the coffee and led her brothers out and down to the street. Rodman stared at the door as if he expected her to burst back through. Then he went to it and locked it. Marty watched the door and said, ‘If she was thirty years younger, I could fall in love, Janet or no Janet.’ Then he turned to his computer and, in twenty minutes, he buried access to the remaining thirty-one or thirty-two million dollars under lines and lines of encryption code. ‘I’m like a fucking dog,’ he said, as he typed. ‘Like a fucking dog burying a fucking bone.’