The Bad Kitty Lounge (6 page)

“How do you know Samuelson didn't do it?”

“I'm not naive. I made my calls and heard details that weren't widely reported. About the writing on her stomach. About the events leading up to the killing. And about the medical examiner's conclusions. The man they've charged had no history and no likelihood of doing this kind of—”

“He'd just torched a Mercedes.”

“He burned the car so that he wouldn't have to confront his wife's lover. He didn't wish to hurt another person, or, if he did, he didn't have it in him to do so.”

I said, “I don't know his psychology but it seems to me that you don't either.”

“For similar reasons I don't believe he would have raped her.”

“She wasn't raped.”

“Have you read this morning's paper?”

“Robert and Jarik interrupted me before I got around to it.”

“She was raped.”

“Not from what I know.”

He shrugged. “He would have shot her, not strangled her.”

I nodded. “Robert's argument, too, and not a bad one.”

“I'm confident in my assessment.”

“Overconfident.”

“What do
you
think, Mr. Kozmarski? Did Samuelson do it?”

I shrugged. “I don't know what to think.”

He considered me for a while. “They say the bruising is consistent all the way around her neck. You don't get that from using the hands. Only a garrote will do that.”

“So?”

“The police found nothing that could have made that bruise. Unless Samuelson raped and strangled her, left to hide the garrote, then came back to the office and shot—”

“Okay,” I said, “so Samuelson didn't do it.”

“But the DA will charge him.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I'm guessing you've also heard that Samuelson was threatened by Eric Stone.”

“Of course. But what did Stone have against Sister Terrano?”

“I thought you might tell me.”

He dismissed that with a wave.

“Why didn't you come to my office to see me yourself?” I asked.

“I'm ninety-six years old. I spend my days caring for my grandson.” He gestured to the big, smiling man in the wheelchair. “I don't get out a lot.”

I looked DuBuclet up and down. He wore the unworried expression of a man used to getting things his way. “I don't know who you are,” I said.

“You can find out all you want to know about me from the newspaper files.”

“And what's with the show here? The closed drapes. The incense. The staff opening and shutting your doors for you.”

He smiled. “The sunlight troubles my old eyes, Mr. Kozmarski, and so the drapes remain closed at my optometrist's orders. The ‘staff' are my family, biological and ideological. It means a great deal to me to have family near at this time in my life. As for the incense, it may be a pretension, but it's one I won't easily give up. I find that as I've grown older the city stinks to me. The South Side, and this neighborhood, and my
neighbors—they smell like a rotting animal. If the incense doesn't cover the stink completely, it allows me to forget it for a while.”

DuBuclet had plausible reasons for thinking Samuelson was innocent of Judy Terrano's killing. But I didn't trust him. He didn't fool me with his tired old-man act. His eyes were alive—he was thinking and scheming like he planned to be around for fifty more years. And like he planned to operate the city from behind the big closed curtain of his house. He was no Wizard of Oz who would shrink into a laughable midget once you pulled his curtain away. His smile scared me. But it also attracted me and I found myself wanting to get close to this man who, at ninety-six, saw reason to stir the pot of this big, stinking city and maybe had the energy and money to make things happen that could and should have happened years ago.

I said, “So you want me to forget about Judy Terrano?”

He nodded. “That's what I want.”

“I'll try,” I said.

The big man reached out a large hand and shook mine with a heavy grip. He said, “You do that.”

THE SECRETARIAL SCHOOL STUDENTS
kept their eyes to themselves when I walked back down the corridor alone to my office. Three stacks of twenties waited on my desk for me to riffle them, but I left them alone. The morning paper, its pages still creased, was lying on the desk near the money. The red light on my answering machine flashed but I ignored it.

I went to the window and looked east. Across the street through the crack between the insurance building and the building to the north of it, the waves on Lake Michigan danced in the late-morning sunlight. The wedge of light and water looked like a path to somewhere I would like to go if only I could step through my window and float through the gap without falling. Just looking at the wedge made me feel good. I stood watching the light and water for a long time until I noticed a man in the corner office across the street staring at me from his window. I waved. He flipped me off and went to his desk.

I figured that meant it was time for me to go to mine.

The front-page headline in the
Chicago Tribune
said,
VIRGINITY NUN KILLED
, with a subhead,
CHASTITY ADVOCATE ASSAULTED
. In the article Stan Fleming got his name mentioned twice along with some punchy lines about the shock this murder had caused to himself, the city, and the world. Without using the word
rape,
he mentioned “an especially disturbing sexual assault on Sister Terrano.”

I trusted Stan but I wondered what he was up to. He'd said that the forensics cop had told him that no rape had occurred. Either the forensics cop had changed his mind or Stan had figured on his own that Judy Terrano's naked body justified the accusation. Or, with Greg Samuelson already lying in the hospital in custody, he might have figured he could benefit from the public thinking Samuelson was a sexual monster.

The article didn't mention the black cat tattoo or the Magic Marker on Judy Terrano's body. I hadn't expected it to.

It did say Greg Samuelson was in critical condition at Rush Medical Center, under police guard, and an unnamed source said he might make it. He'd lost blood and he would stay in the ICU for a couple of days, but they'd seen worse. With him in that shape, the district attorney's office could take their time about charging him. For now, the article described him as a suspect and said the police weren't hunting for anyone else. The article referred to me as an unnamed private investigator who had discovered the nun and Samuelson.

I dropped the paper into the garbage and punched the Play button on the answering machine. The machine said I had four messages. Stan Fleming had left the first. He said, cheery as morning coffee, “You're a friend, so I'm wondering why you left the party early yesterday.” I kicked my feet onto the desk and listened. He yelled at me for leaving Holy Trinity before he gave me permission to go, then calmed down again at the
end before adding, “You know, this case isn't about you and me and Corrine, so everything would go better if you didn't fuck around. Call me as soon as you get this message, okay? We've got more to talk about.” More noise, I figured, and I deleted the message. I was curious if he planned to try to hang Judy Terrano's killing on Greg Samuelson, but he didn't sound like he was in a friendly and giving mood.

The second call was from Corrine. She said she'd seen me on television and was worried about me. She didn't mention Stan Fleming and I wondered if she knew he was heading the investigation. She also didn't mention my smacking my Skylark into the news vans.

The next message was a blank, a click followed by static and background traffic, then a hang-up.

The last message made me take my feet off the desk. “Hello, Mr. Kozmarski,” the caller said. “This is Eric Stone. I'd like to talk with you.” He was more polite than I would have thought he could manage and more than I deserved. I figured he still would want to sledgehammer me into the pavement. He left his number and hung up.

I dialed Corrine on her cell phone, but the call rang through to voice mail. “Yeah, hi,” I said. “Thanks for the call. I'm okay—I'm all right.” It wasn't quite true and it wasn't a love poem, but it told her what I needed it to. I added, “I would like to see you,” and hung up.

Then I called the number Eric Stone had left me.

A receptionist answered, “LCR Real Estate.”

I told her who I was and she made me listen to reruns of eighties pop music while I waited to talk to Stone.

He came to the phone with a voice full of concern. “Mr. Kozmarski, thank you for calling.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Stone?”

“Two things actually. I'd like to know what you said to the police about me yesterday.”

“I told them you threatened to kill Greg Samuelson.”

Unhappy now. “Why would you do that?”

“Because you did, and because Samuelson took a bullet in the face.”

Less happy. “He burned my car. I was angry. I obviously didn't mean that I would kill him.”

“So you didn't shoot him?”

“No.”

“Have you told that to the police?”

“My lawyer and I are meeting with them in an hour.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, Samuelson shot himself. That's what the paper says.”

“Maybe. You said you wanted two things from me. What's the other?”

“Actually, I'd like to talk with you about working for me.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Are you available to meet with me at my Loop office this afternoon?”

“Just talk? No brawling?”

“Just talk.”

I sat at my desk and considered Eric Stone. No matter what he said about playing nice, he was throwing a surprise punch and I wondered what kind of fight he was looking for. No, he hadn't shot Samuelson, he said. Yes, I was curious to know where he was when Samuelson took the bullet and Judy Terrano got killed.

“I can be there at three thirty,” I said.

“Fine,” he said, and we hung up.

I sat at my desk and considered him. Maybe there wasn't a fight in him. Maybe he wanted to give me more stacks of twenties to stay away from the Sister Terrano investigation. Maybe I could retire from divorce work, skip-payment cases, and employee background investigations, and make a full-time gig of doing nothing after nun homicides.

Maybe I needed some lunch.

I peeled a twenty off one of the stacks William DuBuclet's helpers had given me and slid the rest of the money into a file drawer and locked it. Twenty dollars would buy a sandwich and a drink at Grandma's Kitchen just up the block and leave enough change for another lunch like it. I tapped my Glock in its holster, put on my jacket, and let myself out of the office. Then I stepped in again and went to the drawer with the cash in it. I took the twenty from my pocket, balled it up, and threw it in with the rest. Later I could put it in the bank and spend it with a smile. For now, I didn't want to eat on it.

THREE GREEK BROTHERS RAN
Grandma's Kitchen. If they had a grandma, she was dead, living in Greece, or doing dishes in the back. Alexandros, the oldest brother, said the Italian beef was good.

While he put together the sandwich, I thought about the past twenty-four hours.

Greg Samuelson was either an aggrieved husband who overreacted to his wife's affair by burning a car and then got shot, or he was a lunatic arsonist who murdered a nun and then tried to kill himself. Why would he murder Judy Terrano and scribble the words
BAD KITTY
on her belly? What could she mean to him that would lead him to kill her like that?

Eric Stone was either a jerk who screwed another guy's wife and then got payback in the form of a burned Mercedes, or he was a homicidal lunatic who shot the husband of the woman he was screwing and who killed and marked Judy Terrano. Why? Because she interrupted him while he was killing
Samuelson and setting up his body to look like a suicide? Because he had a history with the nun? But why would he?

William DuBuclet's motives were even foggier. He and his gun-swinging helpers were either overly enthusiastic about keeping outsiders away from business they considered their own, or they were playing a bigger game, where threatening a guy like me made sense. I figured they were playing a bigger game. What did Judy Terrano mean to them?

Who was she? The Virginity Nun. A woman with a complicated past, DuBuclet had said. But everyone's past was complicated in one way or another. What did the words
BAD KITTY
mean? What did the cat tattoo mean?

It was none of my business. No one had hired me to find out. DuBuclet had paid me to turn my back on the nun's corpse. Stan Fleming had told me not to interfere. I knew I should take the advice seriously.

Alexandros didn't object when I changed my order from one to two sandwiches with drinks and fries to go. He handed me the bag and my change, then formed a pretend camera with his hands and snapped a picture of me. “You lookin' good on TV, Joe.”

I dropped the coins in the tip jar. “Not all publicity is good.”

“I don't know. I got a cousin who see you and want to meet you.”

I laughed. “I'll get back to you on that,” I said.

“She's twenty-three and very pretty.”

If his cousin was like him she wore a sleeveless white T-shirt and had hairy shoulders.

I drove to Lucinda Juarez's apartment. She lived in Edgewater on the second floor of a gray stone two-flat squeezed between brick-fronted apartment buildings. The neighborhood
had improved in the past five years but still had one of the highest violent crime rates in the city. High enough that Lucinda should have worried about the broken lock on the door leading to the interior stairway to her apartment. High enough that when I found her front door open at the top of the stairs a shiver ran down my back.