The Bad Kitty Lounge (10 page)

“Can't blame him,” said one of the other cops. “I get off on old nuns, too.”

“Sickos, all of you,” said Stan, and he came into the bedroom, followed by the other cops' laughter. He brushed past me and went into the hall. I followed him. “There are days,” he said. “There are—” He stopped again. His eyes were dry but I knew better.

“Yeah,” I said, “there are.”

He shook his head. “Samuelson worked for the church eleven years, the last eight of them for Judy Terrano. Quiet as a fucking rat.” His dry eyes moistened.

“You don't really think he killed the priest, do you?” I asked.

His eyes got stony again. “He's got priors, did you know that?”

I admitted that I didn't.

“Nothing official anymore. The Mercedes he torched yesterday—that's not the first car he's burned. When he was fifteen he burned his mother's station wagon. A 1979 Buick Century. Might even have deserved burning, I don't know. They adjudicated him and he took four months in juvenile corrections.

“He got in trouble again when he was twenty-nine. He worked for a small accounting firm and was directing company checks into his own account. The firm dropped charges when he agreed to pay back the stolen money.”

“Anything else?”

He looked incredulous. “What else do you want? We never arrested him for spray-painting
BAD KITTY
on the sides of subway cars if that's what you're looking for.”

“Burning his mom's car and dipping his fingers into the company bank account isn't homicide.”

He looked at me hard. “The cash in Judy Terrano's architecture book says this is about money, too. Eric Stone's burning Mercedes says Samuelson's still a bad boy.”

“So Samuelson strangled Judy Terrano, shot himself, and then climbed out of his hospital bed to kill a priest?”

“Who else?”

I knew I should tell him about the similarly banded cash that DuBuclet gave me. But instead I said, “If you put this out on the street, a patrolman might think he's doing his church duty to put another bullet in Samuelson's head.”

Stan shrugged. “I might have to agree with him.”

I looked at him, unconvinced.

“Why else would he escape from a locked-down hospital room?” he said.

“A room without a lock or a guard.”

“Still.”

“Did he know you planned to arrest him?”

He looked angry. “Of course he did.”

“Samuelson was unconscious when he went to the hospital. Did anyone tell him? Or did he just wake up and walk out of the hospital without necessarily knowing everyone in the city thought he was a killer?”

Stan considered that. “Okay. But the guy has a major head injury. Why would he leave?”

“Like you said before, he tried to kill himself in Judy Terrano's office. I would drag the river near the hospital and keep an eye open for floaters downstream. He might have left the hospital to finish the job.”

“We've got a little problem with that, too. We did glue-lifts on his hands and they came out clean. No gunshot residue.”

“He didn't shoot himself?”

“I'm not saying that. Not yet. We traced the gun. It's his. And there were powder burns on his face. We're retesting the glue-lifts.”

I shook my head. “He didn't kill the priest in Judy Terrano's room. In the shape he was in, he'd be lucky to have enough strength to flag down a cab to take him to the morgue.”

“A dying man could drop a brick on a guy's head.”

“And kill him?”

“Sure, why not?”

“A dying man couldn't drag him into the bathtub afterward.”

Stan crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, how do
you
figure it?”

I said, “The priest worked closely with Judy Terrano and might have known her secrets. I figure he was looking for the
same thing his killer was looking for and he surprised him in the nun's room. The killer had made a mess of the closet but hadn't gotten further. He was by the desk when the priest came in. He picked up a brick, hit the priest with it, dragged his body into the bathtub, swept the mess back into the closet, and left.”

Stan nodded. “Okay, that fits the scene. What were they looking for?”

“Let's go with your theory. Money. Not robbery, though. Bigger money than we found in the architecture book. Enough to kill for.”

“A nun with big money?”

“A nun with cash stashed in her desk?”

“Okay,” he said. “Where's the money from?”

I considered the connections to DuBuclet—the gold elastic bands around the cash, the threats Eric Stone had told me about, and the gun Robert and Jarik had pulled on me. “I don't know. Look at the audit books.”

“All right. Who's the killer?”

I figured the killer was one of DuBuclet's followers, but I wanted to know more about DuBuclet before I turned him over. “I don't know,” I said again.

Stan thought about it. “It was Samuelson,” he said.

I shook my head. “What else have you found out about Judy Terrano?”

“Grew up on the South Side, one brother now deceased, both parents deceased. Poster child for famous activist nuns. What do you want to know?”

“Any ideas about the ‘Bad Kitty' and the tattoo?”

“No ideas, but that stuff got to me. I dreamed about the tattoo last night.”

“I don't want to know about your dreams.”

“
I
don't want to know my dreams,” he said.

“So what can I do for you?” I asked.

That was easy. “Tell me where to find Samuelson.”

I shrugged. “Try his condo on LaSalle,” I said, “but I'm guessing you've already done that.”

He looked disappointed.

I said, “If he calls me, I'll do what I can to bring him in.”

He nodded. That would have to do.

“I doubt he'll call me,” I added.

He turned back to Judy Terrano's room, then asked, “You find anything other than the book full of money when you searched?”

Denying that I'd dug through her belongings was pointless. “Nothing,” I said. The picture in my pocket of a teenaged Judith Terrano called me a liar, but I wasn't ready to give it up.

Stan looked at me close, like he could hear the picture calling. “You move or remove anything?”

“Of course not,” I said. “Why are you telling the news that she was raped?”

“Huh? I'm not telling them she—”

“You're saying she was sexually assaulted, but you told me that your forensics guy said she wasn't.”

“She
was
assaulted. Her dress was around her neck. Her panties were off. That looks like sexual assault.”

“It looks like it was about to be,” I admitted. “Has forensics found any evidence?”

He shook his head a little. “Not even a hair.”

“So maybe it wasn't sexual assault.”

“What else?”

“I don't know.” I shrugged. “Maybe someone wanted to give you bad dreams.”

I WATCHED STAN WORK
and tried to stay out of the way until 7:30, then slipped out of the housing block into the cold evening. The news camera lights glared like ice.

I cranked the heat in my Skylark and drove. The wind was whipping through the side streets, and the pavement and lawns looked dark as rain-slicked tar. A couple blocks from my house I came around a corner and hit the brakes when something that looked like a red snake slithered halfway across the street. I squinted at it. The headlights shined on a red party streamer. Happy birthday to someone, I thought, and give me dinner and a full night's sleep.

I drove over the streamer and less than a minute later rolled into the alley by my house. The familiar crunch of the asphalt under the tires made me laugh. Snakes. I was seeing snakes.

I pulled into the garage and stepped outside into the dark shadow of the old elm tree. Then two men were beside me in the dark. I reached for my gun but I was too late, much too late.

The men took hold of my arms and turned me back toward the alley. “Come on,” said one of them. I knew the voice—it was of one of DuBuclet's helpers. Robert. I glanced to the other side. Jarik. In his hand, pressing against my neck, black gunmetal glinted in the dark. He and Robert had told me they would come gunning for me if they thought they needed to. Sweat slid down the insides of my legs.

They marched me out of the alley toward the street. “You know,” I said, “you guys spend too much time lurking outside my house. If you'd knocked on the front door, I would've asked you in. If you'd called, I would've invited you for dinner.”

“Shut up,” said Jarik.

“I've got a friend coming over. She's bringing Thai food. Probably not enough for all of us, but we could microwave—”

Jarik stuck the gun deeper into my neck. “Shut up!”

“You must have already eaten,” I mumbled.

Their Lexus was across the street at the curb. Robert patted me down and took my gun.

“In,” he said, and as I climbed into the backseat, Jarik smacked the back of my head with the gun butt. Hard enough to draw blood. Hard enough to make me think of a dead priest lying in a bathtub with a head wound.

Robert climbed in next to me. Jarik drove.

I held a hand to the cut. “Are we going to see DuBuclet again?”

They said nothing.

We went east toward Lake Michigan, crossed under Lake Shore Drive, and cruised into the park at Montrose Harbor. The harbor was a liquid shadow surrounded on three sides by a horseshoe road. The fourth side opened to the deeper shadow of the lake. We circled the harbor until we reached the end of
a rock-and-sand landfill that kept million-dollar yachts safe from storms all summer. Now the docks and mooring cans were empty. The orange glow of the harbor-road streetlights shined on the blank pavement and told me I was all alone except for two guys who'd bloodied the back of my head and forced me at gunpoint into their car. Jarik parked and turned off the headlights but left the motor running. Outside, waves rolled in over the invisible dark of the lake and slammed into the blocks of limestone that protected the shore, then drew away with a hush and a hiss. I started to wish I was in a little boat bouncing on those waves.

Robert spoke again and his voice was calm, businesslike. “If we'd wanted you to work with the cops, we wouldn't have paid you five thousand dollars.”

“How'd you find out so fast?”

“Don't talk. Listen,” said Jarik to the windshield.

Robert said, “William DuBuclet has a long history in Chicago. Not just in politics—a personal history. He'll do anything he needs to do to protect his interests.”

“Do his interests include killing Judy Terrano?”

Jarik shook his head like he couldn't believe I still was talking.

Robert said, “His interests are none of your business.”

“They're worth handing out stacks of twenty-dollar bills.”

“Yes.”

“And killing for?” I asked again.

“I don't think you get what we're saying.” Jarik sounded exasperated.

“I think I do,” I said. “You're telling me to forget about Judy Terrano's death. It has nothing to do with me. Same goes for Greg Samuelson's shooting. Same for the murder of the priest.
I'm supposed to ignore all that. It's someone else's problem—William DuBuclet's, not mine.”

Jarik clapped quietly in the front seat. “Good work, Joe.”

“You know I'm not exactly the only one investigating this.”

Robert's voice was calm. “The cops think they've know the guy who did it. Why do anything to change their minds?”

“It's possible the cops are right.”

“Okay. Then you can sleep good, too.”

“But I don't think they are.”

In a flash, Robert held a gun to my head.

I raised my hands. “But I could change my mind.”

“We don't really care what you think,” Robert said. “We care what you do. So, what are you going to do?”

“Drop out of sight?”

Jarik sounded doubtful. “You said you'd do that the first time we talked with you.”

“You're making a stronger argument now,” I said.

“Yeah? Because we don't want to have to tell you again.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then,” Jarik said, and he flipped on the headlights and shifted into drive.

I grinned a little. “You're not going to kill me?”

Jarik shrugged. “Not yet.”

Robert said, “You're an asshole, but when it matters you make the right decisions.”

I had nothing to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut and fingered the sticky blood where Jarik had hit me.

Fifteen minutes later we pulled up in front of my house. I had one other question I needed to ask. Eric Stone had paid me five thousand dollars to ask it.

I said, “Is William DuBuclet planning to hurt Greg Samuelson's wife?”

Jarik gave me a look like I'd lost my mind. “Why the hell would he want to do something like that?”

“I guess he wouldn't,” I said.

Robert and Jarik got out with me at my house.

I touched the back of my head. I said, “Was the thugs-in-the-night routine really necessary?”

“We want you to know what we can do to you,” Robert said.

“Can I have my gun?”

Robert laughed. “Sure.” He handed me my gun.

Jarik said, “No hard feelings?”

I took my Glock by the barrel. “No,” I agreed. “No hard feelings.”

I swung the gun so its grip hit Robert square in the face, between his nose and his upper lip. He went down on the sidewalk.

Jarik grabbed for his gun but I swung on him, too. I caught him above his left ear and he crumpled on top of Robert. “No hard feelings,” I said. Now we all had blood on our heads.

JASON AND LUCINDA WERE
sitting at the dining room table when I came in. I'd bought the house in the Ravenswood neighborhood after my divorce from Corrine. The ad had called it a handyman special, and I'd figured I should keep my fingers busy doing something healthier than unscrewing the caps from whiskey bottles. Now Jason and Lucinda had shoved the tools I was using to one end of the table, and they'd made the place look like home—if home was plaster dust, aluminum foil, take-out containers, mismatched glasses, and paper towels for napkins, which is what home was for me. They were chatting and laughing and if you didn't know better you could've mistaken them for a mother and son eating together and welcoming home a father who'd been kept late at the office. But we all knew better.