Trouble in Mind Page 13

  ‘More likely, he’ll get a bunch of friends and kill you.’

  ‘More likely he’ll try.’

  THIRTY

  Now, three years later, Kelson drove back into Bronzeville and found Rodman’s apartment building looking exactly as he’d last seen it. A woman wearing an enormous man’s shirt opened the door and called into the apartment, ‘DeMarcus, you’ve got a friend to see you.’

  Rodman came out and enveloped him in another hug. ‘I saw you in the news when you got shot,’ he said. ‘I thought you were dead or dying.’

  ‘I don’t go down so easy,’ Kelson said.

  ‘That kid hit you hard.’ He told Cindi, ‘This guy’s got steel for brains.’

  Cindi said, ‘I’ve seen you in the news. Maybe you don’t have brains at all.’

  Rodman said, ‘So, what’s up?’

  For the next hour, Kelson told him.

  Rodman said, ‘At least you got kittens out of the deal.’

  ‘I need help,’ Kelson said.

  ‘What kind d’you think I can give you?’

  ‘You’re maybe the smartest and strongest guy I’ve ever known.’

  ‘First, you don’t know me. Second, see where it’s gotten me?’

  ‘That doesn’t mean a thing.’

  ‘So, what do you want from me?’

  ‘From what I can tell, you handle people when they try to screw with you. If they see you as a challenge and try, they quickly realize they aren’t up to it.’

  ‘Mostly true.’

  ‘That’s what I want.’

  ‘I don’t do hired muscle.’

  ‘I want to partner with you. It’s paid work – though I don’t have a lot of income right now.’

  ‘Partner, huh? Who bosses who?’

  ‘You do what you want, and I do what I want, and we get the job done.’

  ‘The job being saving your ass.’

  ‘Yep, that’s the first job.’

  ‘So there’s a future to this relationship?’

  ‘Depends on if we get through this one. If we don’t, there’s no partner in me for a partnership.’

  Rodman considered it. ‘Maybe I could give it a try.’

  ‘Good,’ Kelson said. ‘You got any ideas?’

  ‘Sure, we’ll go beat the hell out of Dan Peters.’ When he saw Kelson’s eyes, he said, ‘Kidding. Jesus Christ, who do you think I am?’

  ‘You got any real ideas?’

  ‘Yeah, same as yours. You need Alejandro Rodriguez’s sheet.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  But first they drove to Christian Felbanks’s condo.

  When Christian’s parents let them in, they looked awed by the big man. ‘In the last couple of days,’ Kelson told them, ‘I’ve gotten the sense that whoever went after Christian and Raima wanted something the police don’t know about. The police think this is about prescription drugs. Maybe drugs are in it too, but there’s something else.’

  The Felbankses exchanged a glance.

  ‘Can you think of anyone Christian hurt? Anyone who—’

  ‘No,’ the man said. ‘No one.’

  Rodman spoke with his low, gentle voice. ‘A pretty, red-haired girl.’

  The woman made a sound, as if something stung her.

  Her husband said, ‘Like all boys, Christian … tested boundaries. But he never hurt anyone, never would.’

  ‘What do you mean, tested boundaries?’ Kelson asked.

  ‘The same as every boy,’ the woman said.

  ‘He smoked a little pot? Snuck a drink from your bottle of gin?’

  ‘We don’t drink,’ she said.

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Nothing the other boys didn’t,’ the father said.

  Rodman asked softly, gently, ‘Whose daughter did he fuck?’

  Again, the mother made a sound.

  ‘I need to ask you to leave,’ the man said.

  ‘You don’t like how I talk?’ Rodman said.

  ‘I don’t like what you insinuate.’

  ‘It was an innocent question if the answer’s innocent,’ Rodman said.

  Kelson said to the woman, ‘When I worked on the narcotics squad, I met parents who tried to protect their kids by denying their addictions, as if the denials kept them from something even worse – jail, humiliation, maybe breaking the last trust between them. Some of those kids died – OD or a bullet or a knife – and, even then, a lot of the parents kept up the act. At first that surprised me. I thought they would want to take down the dealers who killed their kids. But then I figured it out. All they had left was illusions. They could talk to me or they could keep imagining their kids before the drugs. It hurt too much to talk. You see what I’m saying? They pretended they were honoring their kids by keeping their secrets. But really, by allowing the people who sold the drugs to keep selling, they were just killing again.’

  ‘Get out,’ the woman said.

  ‘Please,’ her husband said.

  Kelson said, ‘You need to take responsibility for Christian.’

  The husband had tears in his eyes. ‘Please.’

  Kelson and Rodman went down to Kelson’s car.

  ‘They’re scared shitless,’ Rodman said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Whoever got their boy is bringing it to them too. You see that man’s eyes? I’m guessing whoever’s threatening you is threatening them twice. How much did you look into that family?’

  ‘I talked to one of their cousins in Sioux City,’ Kelson said. ‘Heard about the daughter they keep in a home. And I checked Christian’s record. Clean.’

  ‘How about his fiancée – Raima?’

  ‘Good people even when they’re waving guns at me, I think. Scared too.’

  ‘You’d better get back on the phone,’ Rodman said.

  ‘I’ll ask Greg Toselli if he’ll call the Sioux City PD and see if they ever heard of Christian. Maybe he’ll do that much.’

  ‘Leave Toselli out. He’s a hothead and a player.’

  ‘He saved my life. Twice.’

  ‘Yeah, well, there’s that,’ Rodman said, ‘but when things go bad, he’s always there. He’s no one’s surprise ending.’

  ‘What did he do to deserve that?’

  ‘When my brother got killed, he told me the cops had it right. A few more dead boys like my brother, and the bangers would scare back to the holes they crawled from.’

  ‘He’s a true believer,’ Kelson said. ‘A purist.’

  ‘In my neighborhood, we call that a heartless motherfucker – when we’re being polite. I’ll make the call.’

  ‘Who’s going to talk to you?’

  ‘Seems like everyone does.’

  So they both pulled out their phones. Rodman dialed Sioux City and talked in his low, gentle voice – a voice that might coax a wild horse into a corral or a psychopath out of a hostage situation. Kelson dialed Harrison Street Police Station and asked to talk to Venus Johnson.

  He told her, ‘I’ve burned through Peters’s patience. Big man, thin skin. If I call him again, I think he’ll take out a restraining order.’

  ‘So now you’re calling to burn through my patience? Here’s some news – you burned through it the first time we met.’

  ‘You’re much hotter than Peters, though,’ he said.

  Rodman gave him a sidelong.

  She said, ‘I’m hanging up now.’

  ‘I need help,’ Kelson said.

  ‘I don’t practice that kind of medicine,’ she said.

  ‘You talk this way to everyone?’

  ‘Just guys who don’t see past my skin – and other people I find despicable.’

  ‘The tennis thing, huh? Maybe I earned that.’

  ‘Maybe so.’

  ‘All right, forget it.’

  But before he could hang up, she said, ‘Tell it to me. What do you want?’

  ‘Peters doesn’t believe what I tell him, and I’m not asking you to. But I’m in trouble.’

  ‘Not much I can do,’ s
he said.

  ‘When will the department release Christian Felbanks’s body to his parents?’

  ‘You planning to go to the funeral?’

  ‘I want to know how much longer the parents will be in town.’

  ‘Peters told me he warned you away from them.’

  ‘He warned me about a lot of things. He also threw me in jail twice.’

  ‘Maybe the third time will stick,’ she said.

  ‘That’s my worry. When will you release the body?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Then do something that’ll really help. Get me a copy of Alejandro Rodriguez’s case file.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ he said. ‘The case is dead. I can sue to see it.’

  ‘Then you should do that. Look, I don’t think you mean to be a jerk – you’re just what you are. You tried to do your job and got hurt, and that sucks for you. I’ll take a look at the file, OK? And if there’s anything important, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘No promises.’

  ‘Can you answer one more question?’

  She hesitated. ‘Yeah, I’ve got a wicked forehand.’

  ‘Barbara Lisle. The woman who picked me out of the lineup when Peters brought me in the second time. What else have you found on her?’

  ‘You shouldn’t even know her name,’ she said. ‘Even if I could tell you, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Just tell me if you’ve found out anything important – not what it is, just if.’

  ‘Conversation’s over.’

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  ‘You should stop while you’re ahead.’

  ‘I’m no good at that. Sorry again, about the tennis thing.’

  She laughed, and for the first time it was a nice laugh. ‘You want to know something? I really do play. But I’m lousy at it. So the comments irritate the hell out of me.’

  When he hung up, he listened to the soft, soothing cadence of Rodman’s voice and watched the sunlight in the leafless black branches of a curbside tree. Rodman hung up a couple of minutes later and said, ‘Sioux City’s a small town, and the Felbankses are a big family. The lady I talked to is married to someone’s nephew or a friend of the nephew – distant relations but close enough to hear the gossip. About twelve years ago, she thinks, Christian got caught with a girl who turned out to be a cousin. They were teenagers – thirteen or fourteen – and they said they were in love. The Department of Children and Family Services went out and made a report. There was a lot of screaming and yelling and threats in the family. I don’t know if the girl was pregnant or what. The lady didn’t want to talk about it even when I whispered in her ear.’

  ‘Did she say if the girl had red hair?’

  ‘She said, “Honey, if she wanted red hair, she could buy a bottle of it.”’

  ‘So the girl wasn’t a redhead?’

  ‘The lady didn’t say.’

  ‘Did she have a name for her?’

  ‘She said everyone called her “Red.”’

  Kelson gave him a look.

  ‘OK, OK. The name’s Doreen.’

  ‘You’re good. Weird eyes – set too close together – but a big brain behind them.’

  Rodman gave him a long stare.

  ‘Sorry,’ Kelson said. ‘You got any more ideas?’

  ‘A couple, if you don’t mind zigzagging to get where you’re going.’

  ‘I don’t even know what a straight line feels like anymore.’

  ‘Is Venus Johnson going to get you Bicho’s file?’

  ‘She’ll look at it and tell me if it matters – maybe.’

  ‘You say his dad and mom died when he was a kid, and then he got put in juvie?’

  ‘That’s all I know.’

  ‘Maybe it’s enough.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Rodman had Kelson drive to a cold white concrete building on the Southwest Side. The building housed the juvenile court and a temporary detention center. Blue wooden barricades blocked the street by the front doors.

  ‘No matter where they sent Bicho, they processed him through here,’ Rodman said.

  When they went inside, the guard, a thin black man with a starched white shirt, came around from the metal detector and bumped fists with Rodman. ‘You come for Tyrice?’ the guard asked.

  ‘Nah, judge sent him out to Adams County.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that. You’ll check on DeShaun?’

  ‘Not today. This is my friend Sam Kelson. We’re here to see the big man.’

  Kelson held a fist to bump the man’s too, but the man just narrowed his eyes as if Kelson was trying too hard. ‘Say hi to DeShaun if you got time,’ the man said to Rodman. ‘He could use it. And we got a couple new kids from that thing last night in Woodlawn.’

  Then the man let them in, and Kelson said, ‘Who’re DeShaun and the “new kids”?’

  ‘I come to see the boys sometimes,’ Rodman said. ‘Talk to them. Scare them and give them hope.’

  ‘Huh. It do any good?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in about ten years.’

  They went down a gray hall to the detention center director’s office. Charlie Jenkins, the man who worked in it, stood about five eight with glasses perched on top of his bald head. He bumped fists with Rodman too.

  Rodman explained Kelson’s situation and said, ‘He needs a favor.’

  Instead of pulling up Bicho’s record on his computer, the director looked Kelson in the eyes and said, ‘The boys here are animals, most of them. They’ve got all the problems of grown men, plus a kind of kid insanity. We put them here to keep them safe from adults, though, and, except for the worst of them, we let them out at eighteen or twenty-one because maybe they’ve grown out of it. A lot of them are every bit as vicious as the worst of the men. But like all animals, they do what they do because it’s what they are – you can’t really blame them for ripping up their prey. So I protect my boys. Maybe that makes no sense to you?’

  ‘Makes plenty,’ Kelson said. ‘I do what I do because I am what I am too.’

  Rodman said, ‘Charlie and I disagree on the animal part.’

  ‘Yeah,’ the director said, ‘wild cats are gentler than some of these boys.’ Then to Kelson, ‘This Alejandro Rodriguez is dead? That doesn’t change my legal obligation to him. I want you to understand what you’re asking me to do.’ He looked from Kelson to Rodman and back. Then he went to his computer and sat. He said, ‘When DeMarcus first came and wanted to visit the boys, I told him the same thing, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Word for word,’ Rodman said.

  ‘How many times you come before I let you in?’

  ‘Four?’ Rodman said.

  ‘Something like.’ And then to Kelson, ‘So you understand, DeMarcus has saved more than a couple of boys from themselves. I’m doing this for them and for him – because he asked for it. You understand? Because if this comes back on me and hurts me, that hurts the boys, and, vicious as they are, that would be as bad as hurting an innocent animal.’

  ‘I can’t make any promises,’ Kelson said.

  The man took his fingers off the keyboard.

  Rodman laughed. ‘Just the way he talks.’

  The man said to Kelson, ‘Are you fucking around?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Because I’m not fucking around,’ the man said.

  Five minutes later, the printer kicked out sixteen pages. It was a small portion of what Venus Johnson could give Kelson, but when the assistant director handed it to him, he felt as if the man might be saving his life – and he told him so.

  ‘Just don’t let it come back on me or my boys,’ the man said.

  Kelson and Rodman sat in the car and read the file. Mostly it gave dates and numbers – the January day when a judge remanded Bicho to temporary detention, the August day when Bicho left for the Kewanee Youth Center, the schedule and quantities of Zoloft the nurse dispensed to him,
and a meal schedule for a period of time when he was isolated from the other boys. A page of infractions listed three incidents over a period of two months – all for fights in the cafeteria, the third of which led to the isolation. A visitor list mentioned an ‘uncle’ – nameless – who came once a week. Toselli’s words returned to Kelson – Someone loved the kid a lot – the kind of love that makes a person violent. ‘Got to find the uncle,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Rodman said.

  A separate page gave an intake evaluation completed by a social worker three days after Bicho entered the facility.

  Physical Health – good

  Intelligence – high

  Sociability/Social Characteristics – manipulative

  Emotional/Psychological Status – paranoia? Depression (refer for further evaluation)

  Suicide Risk – moderate

  Family – uncle, grandmother. Mother and father deceased. 0 siblings

  Support Range – low

  Education – completed 9th

  Acquaintances Currently at Detention Center – 0

  Another page listed the charges that landed Bicho in detention. There were four, all involving drugs – one for marijuana possession, one for possession of Ecstasy, and two for selling cocaine. Kelson recognized none of the arresting cops’ names.

  The final page contained contact information for Bicho’s lawyer, a man named Rob Chalmers, surprising only because he came from a private firm instead of the Public Defender’s Office.

  ‘See anything?’ Kelson asked Rodman.

  ‘Just the uncle and the jump the boy made from kid-stuff dealing to serious business by the time he shot you.’

  Kelson said, ‘Want to go talk to his lawyer?’

  ‘You do that. I’m going to go back in and see DeShaun and the new kids.’

  ‘I’m fighting a clock,’ Kelson said.

  ‘What did you say about me doing this my way and you doing it yours?’

  ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Rodman said. ‘You should be.’

  ‘Thanks for the boost.’

  ‘You do it your way, and I do it mine.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  Rob Chalmers worked from an office on West Devon Avenue, just inside the northern city limit. The beige-brick building was set back from the street three doors from Novelty Golf & Games, where replica elephants, circus seals, a statue of liberty, and a helmeted conquistador adorned the mini-golf greens. No one played on the cold March afternoon, and the Astroturf looked beaten down. ‘Like the rest of us at funnyland,’ Kelson said as he pulled past.