Trouble in Mind Read online

  ‘I have mixed feelings.’

  ‘That’s sad.’

  ‘Yeah, it is,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t love me.’

  ‘Yes, she does.’

  ‘How do you know?’ he asked.

  ‘She told me. She said she’s no longer in love with you, but she loves things about you.’

  ‘That’s a nice way of saying she doesn’t love me.’

  She thought about that for a moment. ‘Tell me something mean about Mom.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘She farts in the bathtub.’

  Again Sue Ellen squealed with laughter – as if she needed to laugh the way she needed to breathe.

  Kelson said, ‘You shouldn’t ask me to do that. And anyway, you should play this kind of game with kids your own age.’

  ‘They all lie,’ she said.

  ‘Lucky them,’ he said.

  They went out for dinner at Taquería Uptown, a plain-walled place that made great carnitas tacos, and when they returned to his apartment, Sue Ellen did her homework and Kelson spread blankets on the floor to sleep on while she took the bed.

  The next morning, eating a bowl of cereal at his kitchen table, Sue Ellen tried to stump him again. ‘Will you buy me a kitten?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The building doesn’t allow pets.’

  ‘We could keep it at Mom’s house.’

  ‘Then yes.’

  ‘Mom hates cats.’

  ‘Then I’ll buy you two.’

  Sue Ellen squealed with laughter, and Kelson grinned so wide the scar on his forehead hurt. ‘Get your book bag.’

  She stuck her tongue at him. ‘You get it.’

  ‘Don’t be a little shit,’ he said.

  A couple minutes later as they walked down the hall from his apartment, he said, ‘Sorry for swearing at you.’

  ‘It’s all right, you can’t help it,’ she said. ‘Will you buy me a horse?’

  ‘Won’t fit in the elevator,’ he said.

  He felt so good after dropping her off at school that he skipped his breathing exercises and went straight to his office. He wished good morning to two strangers outside the building, to the man who staffed the downstairs reception desk, and to a crowd outside a conference room used by a computer training company that rented space on his floor.

  He put a key into his door lock but didn’t need to – it was already unlocked. ‘Huh,’ he said, and opened the door.

  The woman who called herself Trina Felbanks sat in the client chair at his desk. She wore skintight black leather leggings, black leather boots, and a white fluffy jacket. Her purse matched her jacket. She had a half-moon bruise on her cheek.

  She arched an eyebrow at him.

  He frowned and said, ‘Good morning, Hot Pants.’

  TWELVE

  ‘First,’ Kelson said, ‘how did you get into my office?’ Once more he sat across the desk from the redhead, his thumb covering the 9 key on his phone so he could call 911 if he disliked anything that came out of her mouth.

  ‘I popped the lock,’ she said. ‘I learned how as a kid. Sad story. You don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘No, I do. Unless you want to tell it to the cops.’

  ‘They wouldn’t want to hear it either. I was naughty, so my mom locked me in my room.’

  ‘I can see why she would do that.’

  ‘But my stepdad had a key,’ she said. ‘He visited me when my mom fell asleep. He was naughtier than I was.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kelson said.

  ‘So I figured out how to get past locks – simple ones, like the one on your office. When my mom put on a better lock, I was out of luck. I was thirteen. See? Sad story. It gets sadder if you want to hear it.’

  Kelson said, ‘It would make me cry.’

  ‘Are you making fun of me?’

  ‘No, I do that – I cry. If you tell me a sad story, I can’t help it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to make fun of me.’

  ‘I’m not worried about what you want. You set me up at Christian Felbanks’s condo.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I do what he tells me to do. Whatever he wants.’

  ‘The guy you call Mengele?’

  ‘That’s the way it works. One of us suffers – you or me. Sorry, but that means it’s you.’

  ‘And he bruised your face to thank you for a job well done? Or are you one of those people who like to get hit?’

  ‘Don’t be a jerk,’ she said.

  He pressed the 9 on the phone and let his thumb hover over the 1. ‘Why are you here? I would think you’d stay away from me.’

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened.’

  ‘You don’t look it. When I worked undercover, I saw a lot of people like you. Abused girls who turned to ice. It wasn’t their fault. I still had to bust them, but I felt rotten about it.’

  ‘Don’t be too smart,’ she said.

  He touched the 1 – once. ‘If I was smart, I wouldn’t have gone to Christian Felbanks’s condo. I would’ve seen through you.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘So why are you here?’

  She looked down at her knees, looked at her arms, ran a finger along the sleeve of her fluffy jacket. ‘He set up Christian’s death so that if you didn’t get blamed, I would. That’s the truth. I want you to stop him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Any way you need to.’

  ‘He hit your face?’

  ‘My face is the least of it.’

  ‘Take it to the cops.’

  She shook her head. ‘He has too many friends. High and low. You don’t get away with what he does for very long unless you have friends.’

  ‘If that’s true, you’re taking a big risk here.’

  ‘I’ll be taking a bigger risk if you don’t stop him.’

  ‘What’s your real name? What’s his?’

  She opened her purse, pulled out a little bundle of cash with a fifty on top, and set it on his desk. If he left it for long, it would give him a headache. He left it anyway.

  ‘Jillian Prindle,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you his name too if you’ll do the job. Too dangerous if you won’t.’

  ‘Do you have a working phone?’

  She gave him a number.

  He ended the 911 call and punched in her number.

  ‘It’s not a throwaway,’ she said.

  Her phone rang inside her purse. She let it ring, and he listened to the voicemail greeting identifying her as Jillian and asking him to leave a message. He hung up.

  She said, ‘I’m done lying. I’m scared.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re ice. What’s the man’s name?’

  ‘You’ll do the job?’

  ‘I don’t like men who bruise people. I also don’t like getting set up. If he made you do that, I’ll nail him.’

  ‘His name is Dominick Stevens,’ she said. ‘He runs a big real-estate firm on the West Side, out on Division by Humboldt Park. The business lets him move money without anyone asking questions.’

  ‘How long have you known him?’

  ‘Too long.’

  ‘More of your sad story?’

  ‘The saddest part.’

  He said, ‘I don’t trust you.’ But he opened his top desk drawer and swept the bundle of cash into it.

  When she was gone, she left a scent – a hint of perfume, something of leather and fur, something animal. He breathed it deep into his lungs and said, ‘What the hell am I doing?’

  Then he took his laptop from the desk. As the first light glowed on the screen, he said to it, ‘I know better … as if that matters. She’ll get me killed. Won’t be the first to try. Walked into my office. All but held a gun to my head. And I did what? Rolled on my back. Let her scratch my belly. Kicked my hind leg like a horny dog. Impulse. Blood on the brain.’

  The screen finished loading.

  ‘Shut up,’ Kelson said to it
– or to himself, or to no one and nothing at all – and he typed.

  The Stevens Group website included links to office, multi-unit, residential, and industrial properties. Kelson clicked on one for media.

  If Dominick Stevens worked with partners or had staff, the photos and news articles on the media page didn’t show them. They focused on Dominick himself, a handsome man in his late twenties, with sharp blue eyes. He appeared at industry parties, groundbreakings, and ribbon-cuttings, often in the company of the mayor or a city alderman, sometimes alongside a television or sports celebrity. Kelson looked at a bunch of pictures before realizing that none of the captions named Stevens as the developer or broker of the buildings where he was photographed. He clicked the link for residential buildings and copied three of the listings into an open document.

  Then he dialed the Stevens Group office number.

  A cheerful woman answered.

  ‘I’m calling about your residential properties,’ he said, and gave the first of the listings he’d copied – a fourteen-unit multifamily building on South Ingleside.

  Without waiting a beat, she said, ‘I’m sorry. It’s under contract.’

  ‘Your website doesn’t say so.’

  ‘We signed the papers yesterday.’

  ‘I see. How about the four-unit on North Sheffield? New construction?’

  ‘We’ve experienced delays,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid it won’t be available until June.’

  ‘The West Cortland two-flat with a garage?’

  ‘We lost the listing.’

  ‘Right,’ Kelson said. ‘Could I set up a meeting with Mr Stevens?’

  He knew better than to ask such a question. It begged her to ask why he wished to meet, and if she asked, he would tell her. But she said, ‘Mr Stevens has a full schedule right now. Can I refer you to one of the other real-estate firms?’

  ‘Very generous,’ Kelson said. ‘I see why he gets invited to their groundbreakings and ribbon-cuttings.’

  ‘Mr Stevens is well loved in the community,’ she said. ‘He believes that what’s good for one broker is good for all.’

  ‘You might be the shiniest person I’ve ever talked with,’ Kelson said.

  ‘I’m not quite sure what you mean,’ she said.

  ‘You’re also a bad liar,’ he said, and he hung up. Then, saying, ‘We’ll see about that,’ he took his KelTec pistol from under his desk, checked the magazine, and tucked it into his belt. ‘Impulse?’ he asked, and then answered, ‘No. A feeling’ – then asked another question, ‘The difference?’

  THIRTEEN

  Before leaving the office, Kelson called Dan Peters at the Harrison Street Police Station. Voicemail picked up, and Kelson left a message. ‘The redhead who called herself Trina Felbanks came to my office this morning,’ he said. ‘Broke in, but that’s another thing. Now she says her name’s Jillian Prindle, and she turned me on to the man who paid her to set me up. His name’s Dominick Stevens and he’s supposed to be a big shot in real estate, though from the little I’ve seen I don’t buy it. Jillian Prindle implies he’s a mid-level drug supplier, maybe higher. I’m going to shake him by his ankles. If anything bad falls from his pockets, I’ll bring him to you. Or I’ll shoot him. You know all the things a man can do to get himself shot.’

  He hung up and stared at his phone.

  Then he dialed Peters again. When voicemail clicked, he said, ‘That sounded bad. Here’s all you need to know. I’m going to Dominick Stevens’s office. Maybe I’ll see you there.’

  He hung up again and told the phone, ‘Much better.’

  A cold mist fell as he left his building, the kind of mist that would get fatter and fatter until the street gutters flowed with gray rivers. He went to the parking garage, where the attendant sat in his booth, reading a beat-up newspaper. Kelson said as he passed, ‘Find someone you love, and don’t let go.’

  He drove to Division Street and out past Ukrainian Village. At the west end of Humboldt Park, a block-long redbrick factory manufactured and warehoused martial arts uniforms and equipment. Next door, a four-story glass-and-steel building housed the Stevens Group. The glass front was mirrored. Kelson pulled to the curb and stayed in his car. He slunk low in his seat, watching the building through the mist.

  After ten minutes, he sat up and glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. He felt the shock of having a stranger stare at him, nose to nose. ‘You’ve got a bad case of disinhibition,’ he said, ‘but not a bad case of stupid.’

  Five minutes later, he said, ‘Patience.’ He made a face at himself in the mirror. ‘It’s a virtue.’

  Two minutes passed. ‘But he who hesitates …’ He reached for the door handle, then heard what he’d hoped to hear – approaching sirens. He waited until two Chicago police cars, white with blue racing stripes, rushed up behind him, crossed into the lanes of oncoming traffic, and stopped, blocking the entrance to the Stevens Group building. Four uniformed cops jumped out of the cars, and while one stood in front of the door, his hand hanging above his holstered gun, the others ran inside.

  Kelson waited. ‘One way or another,’ he said.

  More sirens approached. Then the three cops who’d disappeared into the building came back out surrounding Dominick Stevens, who huddled low between the others. The cops guided him into the backseat of one of the squad cars.

  ‘Busted,’ Kelson said, and the squad car flipped on its lights, pulled from the curb, and shot toward downtown.

  But then another cruiser pulled up, followed by an unmarked police car. Two more uniformed cops got out of the cruiser, and Dan Peters eased his huge body from the unmarked car.

  Kelson tucked his KelTec under the front seat and got out too.

  He called a greeting across the street, ‘Detective Peters.’

  Peters and two uniformed cops spun toward him, drew guns from their holsters, and aimed at his chest.

  Kelson raised his hands and said, ‘Whoa …’

  Peters yelled, ‘Down on the ground.’

  Kelson said, ‘Not again.’

  ‘Down!’

  Kelson looked at the pavement. ‘It’s wet.’

  ‘Goddammit,’ Peters said.

  So Kelson got face down on the street, his cheek on the damp grit.

  Peters and the others checked him for a weapon, twisted his arms behind his back, and cuffed him. They yanked him to his feet and threw him against his car.

  ‘What the hell,’ Peters said, his words coming so fast and angry they tangled. ‘What’s going on? What was that message? What the hell!’

  Kelson said, ‘Exactly what I told you. Dominick Stevens killed Christian Felbanks. He’s a drug supplier. The real-estate thing is just—’

  ‘No,’ Peters said, towering over him. ‘You want to know who Stevens is? He’s the son of Ernest Stevens, the senator. He’s only twenty-nine years old but he’s on the Board of Directors at the Chicago Housing Authority. He’s on the Board of the Chicago Loop Alliance. He’s on the Landmarks Board. He has a voice on the use of about half the property in this city. What the hell are you thinking?’

  Kelson said, ‘That doesn’t mean—’ but he stopped, because it did mean all he wished it didn’t.

  ‘Are you insane?’ Peters said. ‘Is that what this is about? You being out of your head? Because we lock up people like you – a danger to yourself and others.’ He turned to one of the uniformed cops. ‘Put him in the back of my car.’

  The uniformed cop did as Peters told him, slamming the car door. For ten minutes, Kelson sat listening to a quiet patter on the car roof as the mist turned into rain.

  The squad car with Dominick Stevens returned. One of the uniformed cops opened the back door, looking like a moonlighting chauffeur, and Stevens climbed out, ruffled but no longer scared. Peters approached him, shook his hand, and talked with him for several minutes – all of his body language apologetic – until Stevens smiled, glanced at the car where Kelson was sitting, and shook his head. He ran his hands down the fr
ont of his suit jacket, shedding the rainwater, as if cleansing himself of the events of the past twenty minutes. Now Kelson understood what had happened. The police had rushed Stevens away from the building, telling him that someone had threatened his life. With the threat gone, Stevens disappeared back through the mirrored glass doors into his life of power and privilege.

  Peters talked to the uniformed cops, who looked up at his large head like young kids, and when he finished, they went to their cars and drove away. Peters gazed at the Stevens Group building, as if trying to think of ways to avoid talking to Kelson, then came to the car and climbed in next to him, his knees denting the vinyl on the back of the passenger seat.

  Kelson said, ‘It’s got to be tough going through life that way. Jamming yourself into little spaces. Getting dirty looks from people on airplanes. Bet you get cramps.’

  Peters stared at him with disgust. ‘The ballistics don’t match.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The bullet we pulled from Christian Felbanks’s head,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t match the gun we took from you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then explain what happened.’

  ‘I told you before.’

  ‘Yeah, a lady came to your office and set you up. And she came back today and set you up again. And you believed her?’

  ‘This time I didn’t believe her, but I also didn’t not believe her. I called you, hoping I wouldn’t have to find out on my own.’

  ‘Yeah, that worked out.’

  ‘No one died,’ Kelson said.

  Peters looked through the rain-streaked windshield at the Stevens building. ‘You know what happens when you make threats like this?’

  ‘I didn’t make a threat.’

  ‘You said you would shoot him.’

  ‘Then I corrected myself. My thoughts came out wrong.’

  ‘Sounded clear enough to me.’

  Kelson said, ‘When Stevens got out of the squad car, he looked freaked out. Why did you talk him down? You could have let him throw me in the fire.’

  ‘I told you,’ Peters said. ‘The ballistics don’t match. Our guys tore apart Felbanks’s condo. No other gun. As far as I can tell, you couldn’t have killed him.’