Hard Case Crime: Deadly Beloved (15 page)

“And if you’ll excuse me,” I said, “I have some closure of my own to take care of.”

That night, at the apartment that was now mine but had once been Mike’s, I sat up in bed, pillows propped behind me. I wore the top of a pair of black silk men’s pajamas, blankets down around my thighs but the sheet coming up fairly high.

Sheer curtains let the lights of the city in and the traffic pulse broken by the occasional siren let you know the world was still out there. But the only light on in the bedroom was the muted one on the nightstand on the side of the double bed that was reserved for the likes of Chic Steele.

Who had just arrived—both our evenings had gotten away from us, and neither of us had felt like meeting for a late bite. So when Chic suggested he stop over and “cut straight to dessert,” I didn’t argue.

Even at the end of the day Chic Steele looked crisp and sharp—I’d always secretly hated him a little for that. I’ve never known a professional woman who didn’t wilt by the end of a long business day, and that certain men could pull off perpetual freshness was an annoyance and, somehow, an insult.

His gray suit was an Armani and he was just getting started in stripping down, loosening the darker gray silk tie.

He said, “And the word on Roger’s good?”

“Very good,” I said. “Slug went in and out—nothing vital hit. I told him he was lucky they tried for his heart, since he doesn’t have one.”

“Ha,” Chic said, arranging his suitcoat over the back of the nearby chair. His shoulder holster with the .38 Police Special was brown and didn’t quite go with the blue-gray shirt.

“It was blood loss,” I went on, “that put Roger in that hospital room.”

Chic slipped off the shoulder holster and slung it over the chair. He shot me a thoughtful frown. “What d’you make of that Salvadoran hit woman?”

I shrugged. “You’re the OCU guy—what do you make of her?”

He was unbuttoning his shirt cuffs now. “Never heard of the woman, but there’s a lot of players on that team.”

“What about the feds?”

Now he was unbuttoning the shirt, nodding. “There was a federal package on Ms. Marquez, which I’m having shipped electronically to Rafe, once some red tape is cut and a few i’s are dotted and t’s crossed.... Those p.j.’s new?”

“Old,” I said, gesturing to the black silk men’s pajamas. “Mike’s.”

His shirt was untucked and he was getting out of it. “Well, he’d have been proud of you today, Michael.”

“Really think so?”

“Sure.” He draped the shirt over a chair arm. “Only, what the hell’s a California Latin gang’s connection to a Chicago Loop accounting firm, d’you suppose?”

“I’m not sure there is one.”

“Oh?” He pulled his t-shirt off, revealing a well-tanned torso and admirable abs.
Abs of Steele
, I’d kidded him, more than once.

I said, “Roger wasn’t even working the Addwatter case.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, his back to me, getting his shoes off—Italian loafers. “Really? I figured you’d pulled him in, and turned him loose on—”

“But there
is
a connection.”

He was shaking his head, tugging off his socks now. “First you say there isn’t one, then you say—”

“A
Muerta
connection.”

He got onto his bare feet and turned to face me. “Michael, my people’ve been looking for a link between these new ethnic factions and the old Muerta mob for months...hell, over a year.”

“Not surprising,” I said. “You’re in a perfect position, after all.”

He was removing his belt. “Perfect position to do what?”

He tossed the belt on the chair.

“Cover up,” I said with a tiny shrug. “Misdirect. Head your people down blind alleys.”

He unzipped.

“What, Michael, are you kidding?”

He stepped out of his pants, change and keys jingling, and folded them over the chair.

I didn’t answer his question. Not directly.

I said, “Thing is...Mike kept things from me.”

He was in only his boxers now. Pale blue with white trim, including the fly.

“I was his partner,” Chic said with a shrug of his muscular shoulders. “He kept things from
me
, too.”

He got out of the boxers, exposing the untanned white skin, tossing the shorts on the chair and climbing under the covers with me.

“Oh, I know,” I said. “Like the
real
reason he left the department.”

We were side by side in bed now. He propped up his pillows and settled in, comfy, then positioned himself to gaze at me.

Pillow talk.

“I
know
the real reason,” he said. “To open his own agency. He’d been dreaming and planning for years.”

I nodded. “Sure, that was part of it. But it also gave Mike a safe base of operations. Safer, anyway.”

Chic shook his head a little. “Afraid I’m not following.”

“Oh sure you are. Mike and Roger both quit the force, at the same time, to go private. But their agenda included continuing a certain ongoing investigation—one that couldn’t be safely conducted within the department.”

He squinted at me, like I’d just gone badly out of focus. “
What
investigation?”

“Police corruption,” I said, matter of fact. “PD ties to organized crime.”

His forehead tightened. So did his voice. “You can’t be serious—I helped Mike put Muerta away!”

“Right. You put Old Man Muerta away, and within months, he dies. Terminal illness. Setting the stage for Dominique to take over, the good daughter who wanted to go strictly legitimate, right?”

His smirk was dismissive. “We’ve found nothing indicating otherwise.”

“Not with you in charge of the OCU they haven’t!” I let nastiness into my smile, finally, and my tone. “The only thing I’m unsure about is whether Mike
knew
about you....”

He shifted, propped by an elbow. He gave me a hard, sincere gaze. “Nothing
to
know. You’re wrong. I loved the man.”

“Shut up,” I said.

And I let the gun in my hand, under the sheet, poke prominently, obviously, up at him.

He frowned. “Is that...?”

“Maybe I’m just glad to see you,” I said.

“Michael...Don’t do anything foolish....”

I cocked my head, regarding him like a housewife checking a milk carton’s expiration date. “Mike may have known, or suspected you were dirty, your long friendship making him look the other way. Or maybe he just didn’t believe it was possible...or perhaps he was keeping you close, where you’re supposed to keep your enemies, particularly the ones pretending to be friends.”

His eyes and nostrils flared. “Michael, this is insane! I was best man at your wedding!”

“And about the only person in the world besides Mike Tree who knew we’d be staying at that shabby little motel, that first, and last, night of our honeymoon....”

“Is
that
your big evidence?”

The nine millimeter in my fist slipped out from under the sheet to point at him openly.

“No, just my favorite.” My hand was steady as it gripped the weapon. “Roger Freemont’s been gathering dirt all through the past year—despite your best efforts, he’s alive and well...and all of his work is in Lt. Valer’s hands, right now.”

Any defense, any pretense, fell from his features, like a flimsy garment slipping off a hanger. But there was nothing cold in that face—he seemed sad and troubled, but not defiant or angry.

He just said, “No...no bluff?”

“No bluff.”

Despite the gun, he edged closer, more intimate. “I do love you, Michael. I loved you before—”

I shoved the snout of the nine mil into the hollow of his throat and gave him my most horrible smile.

And I have a few.

“Some day,” I said, “I hope to get the smell of you off of me. It’ll take a hell of a bath, won’t it? Bloodbath, maybe.”

His lower lip quivered and his eyes were going all girly and moist.

“Do it,” he said, voice trembling. “
Do
it, then. Mike would.”

I backed the gun’s snout off, just a little. An inch maybe, so that it was no longer kissing his flesh.

“Kill you?” I said, and I smiled as if I still loved him. “After all we’ve meant to each other?...Why, I’m not going to kill you, Chic. I’m going to see you humiliated and disgraced. I’m going to watch you scramble and wheedle and deal, and then I’m going to watch you go to the pokey, anyway—where so many of your old friends are waiting to settle scores.”

Chic made a kind of half-dive for that chair so near the bed, where his .38 hung in its shoulder holster, and I helped him out, kicking his ass out of my bed and onto the floor where he lay in a naked pile and, when he finally looked up at me, I was looming over him in the black pajamas, pointing both guns down at him, mine and his.

“You are a bitch,” he spat.

“You made me yours,” I agreed. “Now you get to be somebody else’s....Stand up.”

He did. Stood there in all his well-tanned, dick-dangling glory, with his hands up and his chin down.

“Put your clothes on, Chic,” I said. “You never were one to stay the night.”

The light seeping around the drawn curtains in Dr. Cassel’s office was strictly the electric illumination of Chicago after dark. And only the green-shaded lamp, making a soft glow on the nearby desk, provided any light at all.

“What a week you’ve had,” the doctor said, his notebook in his lap. He checked his watch. “We’ve gone way over....”

I sat up. Swung around. Put my feet on the floor. “Sorry.”

He rose, smiling, tossing the notebook over on his desk. “I got caught up in it myself....No harm, no foul. You were my last patient, anyway.”

I got my purse from the floor near the recliner and went over to the coat rack and slipped my trenchcoat on.

“My receptionist is gone for the day,” the doctor said, “but I can write you in myself.”

“Fine,” I said, and went over and took the client chair opposite the psychiatrist, who was checking his appointment book—paper, not electronic. Very Old School, the doc.

“I have a cancellation on Wednesday,” he said. “I think we should start working on all of this new material as soon as possible.”

“I’ll be available.”

He wrote that down in the appointment book, shut it and slipped it away in a desk drawer. Then he looked across the desk at me, folding his hands prayerfully.

“Such a shock,” he said. His expression was grave. “A terrible blow. What this Captain Steele did to you, unimaginable. A trusted friend, a lover...betraying you so.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sucks.”

He studied me for a few moments, sighed, and shook his head somberly. “Ms. Tree, really, this...
flippancy
of yours. We’re going to have to really dig. You can’t simply shrug off such traumatic events.”

I shrugged. “Nature of my business, Doc, digging into traumatic events. Think of Marcy Addwatter and what I had to unearth there—of course, that’s a little bit different.”

“How so?”

I gestured with an open palm. “Someone used the traumatic events in her life to know just what buttons to push....”

“True,” he said, nodding, tenting his fingers now. “Actually, it’s surprising that this policeman, your Captain Steele, would have the sophistication to be your so-called Event Coordinator.”

“That’s ‘Planner,’ at least as Rafe’s dubbed it, and, well, you’re right. Would be surprising—only Chic Steele wasn’t the Event Planner.”

“But you said...?”

“Chic was responsible for a lot of what went down
...
only, you’re typically insightful in describing him as not being terribly sophisticated.” I shifted in the chair, which was unpadded. “Chic tapped a mobbed-up hitter to follow me, and try to take out Roger Freemont...not exactly a deft play. And when that flopped, he sent a recent street-gang grad to play nurse with a hypo full of mercy killing, minus the mercy. Not what you’d call subtle.”

“I see.” Dr. Cassel leaned back in his chair, rocking gently. “But perhaps this only reflects the hastiness of those two events, the lack of time available for proper planning.”

I sat forward and gave him a smile that was equal parts friendliness and respect. “Doc, could I ask you something? Something off the clock?”

He flipped a hand. “Certainly.”

“I came to you because my husband used to.”

“Correct.”

“I always wondered if that was really, exactly... ethical. I mean, can a husband and a wife go to the same shrink?”

Dr. Cassel mulled that a few moments, then said, “Generally, only when it’s for marital counseling... but with your husband deceased, well, that changes everything.”

“Doesn’t it though.” I cocked my head. “Why did Mike come to you in the first place?”

His smile became uneasy. “Now answering that
would
be unethical....”

“Even with a deceased client?” I shook my head. “Mike was just about the most down-to-earth, uncomplicated,
un
-traumatized guy I ever met.”

He raised both eyebrows. “I will say this, Ms. Tree: your husband took a number of lives in the line of duty. That can be difficult to cope with. And, as you know, I am on the approved list of psychiatrists for police officers, and seeing someone on that list is required of any officer involved in a fatal shooting on the job. As was your husband—on more than one occasion.”

But I had to shake my head at that. “Doc, Mike wasn’t shy about taking down a bad guy. Department regs could have sent him to you. But he kept coming to you long
after
he was off the PD. Why would he do that?”

He waved that off. “I can only suggest that Mike was more troubled by the lives he’d taken than he might have admitted to the woman he loved. Perhaps male ego issues were involved. And there’s always the possibility that he found our sessions useful.”