The Bad Kitty Lounge (5 page)

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.”

“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.

They exchanged a look. Robert slipped the money into the knapsack, slung the knapsack over his shoulder, and turned toward the door. I felt pretty good about myself until Robert spun back. He held a pistol. He pointed it at my belly.

“No,” he said. His voice was like a dry well. “It works like this. We make an offer, we give you the money, and you take it.”

Jarik said, “Uh-huh.”

My Glock was on my desk. If I grabbed it, I probably could squeeze off a shot before I died, but then two of us would be dead and that wouldn't help anyone.

Robert put the knapsack on the desk. “You do what you want with the money. You wipe your dick with it or you spend it getting drunk or high 'cause that's what the word on you is. Are you still into all that, Joe? Or maybe you're clean now, and you buy football tickets and take that little nephew of yours out for a nice afternoon.”

I heard the threat in the last bit. They could roll down a window and point a pistol at Jason as easily as at me. “I don't like you knowing so much about me,” I said.

“We don't want you to like it.”

I thought about that. “Okay,” I said.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, I'll take your money. I won't investigate Judy Terrano.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then.”

Robert put the stacks of twenties on my desk again, and he and Jarik left. They didn't say another word. They didn't give me a phone number where I could reach them if I had questions or second thoughts. I didn't ask them for one.

The sensible thing would have been to put the money in the bank and take a vacation. I'd already quit working for Samuelson, and I'd never planned to investigate Judy Terrano. I could sign Jason out of school for a week and take him fishing in Florida. That would be safe. Sensible.

I tucked my Glock into my over-the-shoulder rig and slipped on my jacket, leaving the cash on my desk. The lights at the end of the hall said the elevator was at the fourth floor and heading down. A sign warned that if you opened the door to the emergency stairwell next to the elevator shaft an alarm would ring. It was a lie. I took the steps two at a time.

ROBERT AND JARIK DROVE
fast through the morning traffic, shifting lanes just before delivery trucks put on their brakes in front of them, accelerating through intersections. I followed a few car lengths back. There's no such thing as an invisible tail. If a driver is looking for you, you'll be seen. Apparently Robert and Jarik weren't looking.

We went west out of the Loop, glided across three lanes onto the entrance ramp to the Dan Ryan, and sped south. Ten minutes later we exited into Beverly, a tree-lined neighborhood, once middle-class Irish, now mostly middle-class black.

I figured the money that Robert and Jarik put on my desk came from someone who'd ordered them to persuade me to take it as a payoff. Who was backing them? Who wanted Judy Terrano's murder to be pinned on Greg Samuelson? The real killer?

Robert and Jarik pulled up next to a large, yellow house and climbed out of the SUV. I drove past and, a half block away, swung to the curb. I gave them a minute and walked back to
the yellow house. The yard was clean and neat, the lawn raked and green, the trees bright with fall color. An autumn wreath hung on the front door.

I knocked on the door.

After a long time a very dark-skinned housekeeper in her eighties opened it. The edges of her eyes drooped like they'd been weighed down by a century of tears. She said, “Yeesss?”

“I'm here to see Robert and Jarik,” I said.

Her jaw hardened. “Are you certain?”

I said I was.

“Very well.” She stood aside, let me in, and closed the door.

The front hall was bright and tiled with slate. The air smelled like cedar smoke. A heavy mahogany sculpture of a naked girl stood to the left inside the entrance with breasts so perky you could hang hats on them.

The housekeeper led me up the hall and knocked on a closed door. The door opened a crack and the head of a kid in his late teens appeared. The woman said, “A man is here for Robert and Jarik.”

The kid disappeared behind the door. I was tired of the show, so I reached for the knob, but the woman stepped in my way and hissed, “Patience.”

The kid opened the door again.

A tall black man, dressed all in gray, his broad head shaved bald, stood by a large, dark-wood desk. He looked ninety or ninety-five years old at least, but his chest was broad and he stood straight and solid. Robert and Jarik stood behind the tall man. If they were surprised to see me, they didn't show it. Another man, about forty years old, sat in a wheelchair. He was an enormous man in vertically striped pants and a horizontally striped shirt. He stared at the tall man with dull eyes and
a dull smile, and slowly and silently clapped big long hands. Saffron drapes, bunched at the bottom, were pulled shut over what must have been a large window. A black-and-gold-patterned mud cloth hung on the wall behind the desk. A stick of cedar incense wafted into the air from a tray on a sideboard. The room looked like a movie set for a 1970s film about an island dictator.

“Ah, Mr. Kozmarski,” said the old man with a warm smile, as if he'd expected me.

I nodded. “And you are?”

“I'm William DuBuclet.”

His name flashed back to me from when I was a kid. William DuBuclet had been a controversial leader in black Chicago from the early sixties until the eighties, starting in the civil rights movement when he'd pushed for a mix of violent and peaceful action, mostly violent. Later, if I remembered right, DuBuclet had gone back to school and written a book on ghetto politics. He'd eventually become a power broker who'd helped elect Chicago's first black mayor.

“I thought you were dead,” I said.

With a gentle smile, he admitted, “A common misconception. Some mornings even I'm not certain. But as you see, I'm still here.”

“And still stirring the pot.”

He nodded. “When I think the pot's worth stirring and I have enough energy to stir it.”

“Like now, for instance. Why are you concerned about Judy Terrano's death?” I asked.

With the same gentle smile, he asked, “Did you know her?”

“Barely,” I admitted. “Mostly what I read in the paper. I take it you knew her?”

“Very well. She was an extraordinary woman, one of the most brilliant I've known. Her death is an enormous loss. Everyone loved her and not with a normal love either. With passion. I never knew a man who refused to give her what she asked for.”

“You'll have to sign up to speak at her funeral.”

He nodded once, ignoring my tone. “Yes, I may have to.”

“Why don't you want me investigating her killing?”

“Like everyone else, Sister Terrano lived a complicated life.” He emphasized the word
complicated
like it carried a history of grief. “In recent years, it became more complicated. It's sometimes better to be able to think about our heroes in simple terms.”

“What exactly complicated her life?”

He gave me a knowing smile, like he figured I already was in on the secret. “This is my pot to stir,” he said. “If too many people stick their hands in, everything gets messy. I want to resolve this my way.”

“You'll have a hard time convincing the police to keep their hands out.”

He shook his head impatiently. “They won't look further than Samuelson.”

I looked at him unconvinced.

“I know that your father was a policeman and that you, for a time, were, too,” he said, “but I—”

“How did you learn about me and my dad?”

“I have deep connections and old ones to this city. I make a few telephone calls and I find out what I need to know.”

“I don't think I like your knowing about me.”

He smiled a thin smile. “No disrespect, but I also know the police from a time when a dog could get more justice in this
city than a black man—or a black woman, even a famous black woman. The police will take the fastest path, and that path is Greg Samuelson.”