The Bad Kitty Lounge Page 3

  I shifted into reverse and backed the car until it tapped the bumper of the van behind me. Top-heavy with the broadcast mast, the van wobbled. I cut the wheel, shifted, and tapped the van in front. I went back and forth like that for a while, gaining a couple of inches each time and making the masts sway like trees in a heavy wind. The guy who drove the van in front of me eventually noticed and ran over from where he’d been standing with a reporter and a cop. He yelled at me through the window. I waved at him and cleared the van bumper, pulled my Skylark onto the sidewalk, drove it half a block, and dropped back off the curb onto the street.

  I breathed in and filled my lungs with the sweet, musty air of the old car. But deep as I breathed, I tasted the salt and metal of Samuelson’s blood and Judy Terrano’s nakedness. The street stretched in front of me, but in my mind I saw the jawless face of a man who’d shot himself and a tattoo of a big black cat in the grip of pleasure and pain.

  SIX

  THE LAST OF THE sun was dying from the sky when I drove over the crumbling asphalt in the alley next to my house. An old elm grew over the garage. Disease had wiped out most of the elms in Chicago when I was a kid, and I bought the house as much for this tree that had survived when city workers chainsawed the others as for the building I lived in. As I walked to the house, the tree swayed over me in the cold wind and blanketed the yard in darkness.

  But inside the house the lights and television were on as I unlocked the back door. I closed my eyes and made my face calm, at peace with my life and the world.

  A tall, dark-eyed eleven-year-old boy came around the corner into the kitchen and skidded into me in his socks. He had a smile that could make arsonists and dead nuns blush and hide their heads. “Hey, Joe,” he said.

  I gave him a hug. “Hey, Jason.”

  He was my cousin’s son. She’d run off with a guy who worked at the Jacksonville Port Authority. Jason’s dad was long gone. Everyone else in the family thought Jason would benefit from the good influence of living with a man in the family: me—though why they thought I was a good influence, I didn’t know.

  He told me about his day at school. I didn’t tell him about Holy Trinity. He said a kid named Tim Naley had been holding a lighter under the butts of classmates as they worked the combinations on their lockers. I didn’t tell him about Greg Samuelson using a Bic to torch a $65,000 Mercedes. I said, “Tim Naley’s a jerk, and one day someone’s going to let him know it.”

  He nodded, tight-lipped, like he knew it, and went to get his backpack. He pulled out a rubber-banded roll of yellow paper. It was a painting of a face that I recognized as a skewed version of his mom. “Hey,” I said, “that’s great.”

  He smiled at the picture. “We had Picasso Day in art.”

  He sat at the kitchen table and did his homework while I thawed hamburger meat in the microwave and turned on the burner under a skillet. I’d gotten out the buns and put a pad of butter on the skillet when the phone rang. I’d been having bad luck with phones, so I let it ring until Jason looked at me. I answered and my mom said, “You’re on TV. Again.” She said it the way she might have said, “Your mug shot’s in the post office. Again.”

  I said, “Did the shirt I was wearing make me look fat?”

  “Come for dinner tonight.”

  “I just started burgers.”

  “Joe?”

  “Yes?”

  “Come for dinner.”

  “The news cameras caught me walking out of the church, huh?”

  “And ramming your car into two news vans.”

  “I didn’t ram them. I tapped them.”

  “You rammed them. And then you made your getaway down the sidewalk.”

  “It wasn’t a getaway.”

  “What time will you be here?”

  I glanced at Jason scribbling answers on a worksheet. “We’re leaving the house right now.”

  Mom lived in a yellow, one-story bungalow on Leland, the house where I grew up. When we pulled into her driveway, knob-shaped boxwoods along the path leading to the front door shimmered silver in the headlights. The skinny white pine by the street leaned south in the October wind like it knew better than to stick around for winter.

  When Mom opened the door, the smell of simmering meat and vegetables drifted out. A loaf of bread, a salad, and a pot of golonka stew waited for us on the dining room table.

  “Two days it takes to make this right,” she said as she ladled the golonka into bowls.

  “But you managed it in the hour and a half since you saw the news,” I said.

  “I work wonders. Anyway, I didn’t say I made it right.”

  Jason picked a piece of meat out of his bowl. “Is this a foot?”

  “It’s a hock,” Mom said. “Eat it.”

  He did.

  She said nothing about Holy Trinity during dinner, but I caught her watching me like she’d seen cracks in my surface and worried about them getting bigger. After we cleared the plates, she poured coffee and asked Jason to take out the garbage.

  She put both elbows on the table and rested her chin on the backs of her hands. “Why were you at the church when Judy Terrano got killed?”

  I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “I wasn’t. I came afterward. I was working for her assistant, the man who shot himself. A divorce case.”

  She sighed, too, like that relieved her. But she said, “Did you have your gun?”

  My Glock 23 had been sleeping in my glove compartment all day. “This was a divorce—”

  “Your father would have had his.”

  “Please don’t,” I said.

  “He would have.”

  “He wouldn’t, because cops don’t work divorce cases.”

  “He worked North Side, South Side, and West Side, but wherever he worked he took his gun.”

  “Can we change the subject?”

  “No, we can’t. These people—these people you’re working with are dangerous.”

  “Mom,” I said, trying my best, “these people are a nun and her assistant. Something went wrong today, and it’s sad and ugly and all that, but it didn’t happen because they’re dangerous.”

  She glared at me like I was mocking her. “I know who they are. Do you know Judy Terrano’s background?”

  “I was working for her assistant, not her.”

  “And what do you know about him?”

  I knew a large caliber bullet had taken off the bottom half of his face. I knew he shot himself, or, if he didn’t, Eric Stone did. I knew he burned a $65,000 Mercedes. I knew he loved his wife. “Nothing,” I said. “But Judy Terrano was a nun.”

  “I know what she was.”

  Jason came in from dumping the garbage, and our talk ended. Over dessert, Mom went back to watching my face for cracks. When she kissed me good night, she whispered, “Always carry your weapon.”

  “Come for dinner on Friday,” I answered.

  “I don’t eat takeout,” she said.

  “I’ll cook.”

  She kissed me again. “I’ll eat beforehand.”

  Jason and I got back to my house a little after 10:30. As soon as he’d changed into his pajamas, I made a show of looking at my watch and announced, “Bedtime.”

  He shook his head. “From now on I’m going to stay awake at night.”

  “Like an owl?”

  He nodded.

  “And for your two A.M. lunch, you’ll eat what?—mice?”

  “I’ll call out for pizza.”

  I picked him up over my shoulder.

  He laughed. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m carrying you to your room. It’s time.”

  I dropped him on his bed and turned out the light. When I got to his door, he said, “Did you know aphids can have babies thirty times in one summer?”

  “Good night, Jason,” I said.

  “I saw you on TV this afternoon.”

  I flipped back on the light. “You and everyone else.” I sat on his bed and told him what had happened at the church,
told him how sad it was when such things happened, reassured him that he was safe. He took it all in and his eyes said he understood it the way I would have hoped.

  I flipped off his light and said good night again. When I reached his door, he said, “Joe?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Anytime.”

  “Why did you ram those news vans?”

  I ROLLED AROUND IN bed, sleepless. When I closed my eyes, I saw Greg Samuelson, bloodier than a dead man, stretched across Judy Terrano’s desk, a gun inches from his fingers. I saw Judy Terrano stretched across the floor, a big black cat tattooed on her belly, graffiti under it.

  I tried to change the topic. I thought about the women who’d made love to me. My ex, Corrine, who I loved and who loved me, though we’d broken every promise we’d ever made to each other. A twenty-year-old with black hair and blue eyes, whose name I barely knew. Lucinda Juarez, though we’d spent only one night together.

  But as I drifted toward sleep, as I approached the edge where I would fall into the warm hole where consciousness would shed like a dirty second skin, flashes of a naked, brutalized woman, her dress pulled up around her neck, and a man with a hole in his head raced through my mind. I jerked awake and turned on the light.

  When we were married, Corrine had talked me down at times like this. I grabbed the phone and dialed her number. The phone rang and rang. Maybe she was lying awake in the dark, listening to it ring. Maybe she was lying in some guy’s arms, ignoring the sound. Maybe she was making love with him and they heard nothing but each other. Maybe the guy was Detective Stan Fleming.

  Ah shit, I thought, and I turned out the light. I thought about the burning Mercedes. I thought about Samuelson and his gun, and about Sister Terrano, her tattoo, and the inked words, BAD KITTY. I thought about the forensics man who dressed like Smokey the Bear and inspected the skin cells of a dead nun, all in a day’s work.

  I thought about a lot. All of it exhausted me, and none of it made me tired enough to sleep.

  At 2:00 A.M., I considered ordering out for mice. I smiled at Jason sleeping a room away. The last time I looked at the clock, it said 2:13 A.M. I slept then and dreamed of nothing at all—a deep nothingness—and woke up frightened.

  SEVEN

  THE CLOCK SAID 6:40, and the first light was glowing through the window blinds. I pulled up the covers and fought against the morning. When that didn’t work, I put on shorts, a hooded sweatshirt, and running shoes. I checked on Jason, who was sleeping the sleep envied by guys like me, and ducked outside into the morning chill.

  I ran north to Montrose and west toward the North Branch of the Chicago River. The wind had dropped overnight and I ran hard until I broke a sweat. I stopped and stretched on the bridge over the river. The river keepers had been scrubbing a hundred and fifty years of chemicals from the riverbed, and a fish or two had been spotted testing itself against the sluggish current. Now and then a pleasure boat motored past on summer days. Signs for luxury apartments were advertising river views. But the water still looked as brown and dirty as the city was old.

  I ran south into Horner Park. The park was fine for a run in the early morning, great for an afternoon softball game, and not a bad place to buy crack after dark. By the field house, a granite bas relief of ex–Governor Horner, with a crowd of orphans and widows around him and an image of Justice behind him, watched over the park. On cold, windy evenings, the crack dealers set up shop in the shelter of the monument.

  I picked up my pace and ran home.

  At the curb in front of my house, a couple of guys in baseball caps sat in an idling Lexus SUV. The driver had licorice black skin, and the guy on the passenger side had skin a couple of shades lighter. I nodded to them. The passenger nodded back and unrolled his window. He gave me a smile and I slowed to see what he had to say.

  He said nothing.

  He lifted a nine-millimeter pistol and pointed the barrel at my belly.

  His smile fell, and then he said, “Bang!”

  EIGHT

  AFTER THE BURNED RUBBER of spinning tires faded into the cold air, I swallowed my heart and let myself into my house. “What kind of jerk-ass stunt was that?” I muttered, and Jason answered, “What kind of jerk-ass stunt was what?”

  I joined him for a bowl of cereal, shaved and showered, and, good son that I was, tucked my Glock into an over-the-shoulder rig as I got dressed. No more neighborly fellowship for me this morning.

  After dropping off Jason at school, I drove downtown to my office on South Wabash. My office was on the eighth floor of an eight-story building, the only office on a floor occupied by a secretarial school. The school taught inner-city women who’d received federal education grants or state assistance to get off welfare. It took the government checks, gave the women a few lessons on a PC, then kicked them out the door back to the streets.

  I parked in the alley next to the building, bought a newspaper out of a box, and went inside. The two guys who’d pulled a pistol on me in front of my house were standing next to the elevator. They were good-looking guys, one in his young twenties, the other a few years older. The younger one had three or four inches on me. I had an inch on the other one, the one who’d waved the nine-millimeter pistol at me. The tall one carried a knapsack.

  I pulled out my Glock, nodded to them.

  When the elevator came they stepped in and stood on either side of me. We rode up past the third floor in silence. Then I said, “You guys got names?”

  “Robert,” said the tall one.

  “Jarik,” said the other.

  “My name’s Joe Koz—”

  “We know who you are,” said the tall one.

  “Of course you do.”

  We got off at the eighth. The secretarial school was between classes, and women filled the corridor, so I held my gun close. The women gave Robert and Jarik eyes that they’d never given me. Corrine used to tell me I looked like Lech Walesa from the Solidarity days but with abs and forget the moustache. Whatever I looked like, I didn’t get the doe eyes that these guys got.

  At the end of the corridor I unlocked my door and let us into my office. The single window looked east over the El tracks and, through a gap between the opposing buildings, toward Lake Michigan. The view made up for the cheap furniture. I went to the coffeemaker and made a point of taking my time about getting it started, then went around to the other side of my desk and sat down. I put my Glock on the desk to remind them that they should act nice.

  The one who called himself Robert unzipped the top of the knapsack and removed a stack of crisp twenty-dollar bills wrapped with a gold elastic band. He set it on the desk and we all looked at it as if it might get up and do a little dance. It wasn’t the biggest stack of money I’d ever seen but it was big enough to interest me.

  “That’s for you to stop investigating Judy Terrano’s death,” Robert said.

  The money surprised me about as much as the nine-millimeter they’d pointed at me. So I got up and stuck a coffee cup under the trickling coffeemaker spout and then went back to my desk. I didn’t offer Robert and Jarik a cup.

  I said, “I’m not investigating Judy Terrano’s death.”

  “Right,” said Robert. “Three thousand should help you remember that.”

  “What do you care about her?”

  They exchanged glances. “Does it matter?” Robert asked.

  “Probably. She seems to have had friends in a lot of places. I take it you know I was there yesterday.”

  Jarik laughed. “Yeah, the TV’s been showing your ugly face night and day.”

  Robert smiled. “We’re impressed by how you do business.”

  “What do you know about how I do business?”

  “We know what you did to the TV vans.”

  “I didn’t do anything to the vans!”

  They grinned at each other.

  I said, “What’s it matter if I investigate Sister Terrano? The cops are all over this.”
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  “They have the guy with the bullet in his face. They’re not investigating anything.”

  “Greg Samuelson. Do you think he did it?”

  Robert waved that off. “’Course not. If he’s got a gun—and we know he’s got a gun—why strangle her? Why not shoot her, then shoot himself? It’s a hell of a lot easier.”

  The point I’d made yesterday. “Maybe,” I said. “So why did Samuelson shoot himself if he didn’t kill the nun?”

  Robert glanced at Jarik, then back at me. “You think he shot himself?”

  I didn’t necessarily. “If not him, who?”

  Robert shrugged. “The guy his wife’s fucking. Eric Stone.”

  I shook my head. “Stone in the news, too?”

  “No,” Robert said, “Stone’s not in the news.”

  “Then how do you know—?”

  “Look,” said Jarik. “You want the money or not?”

  “Sure I want the money. Who’s backing you? Or did the two of you dig into your bank accounts on your own?”

  Robert glanced at Jarik and said, “The man would rather not identify himself.”

  “So you’re paying me off for someone whose motives I don’t know?”

  Robert nodded. “That’s about it.”

  I nodded, too. “Five thousand.”

  Robert reached into his pack and pulled out two thinner stacks of twenties, each wrapped with another gold band. He put them side by side on the desk.

  “What if I say six?”

  He shrugged. “I reach into my bag and pull out more money.”

  “Tell me something. What was the point of your surprise visit outside my house this morning?”

  “We want you to remember that we know who you are and where to find you.”

  I thought about that. “Nah. I won’t take your money. Put it away and get the hell out of here.”

  Robert looked disappointed. Jarik looked angry. “I think you should reconsider,” said Robert.

  “Nothing to reconsider. It works like this. If someone comes to my office and makes an offer I don’t like, I say, ‘sorry.’ I usually say it with a handshake and a smile but those are optional. So that’s what I’m saying to you. ‘Sorry.’ ” I smiled when I said it but I didn’t offer them my hand.