Lucky Bones

by Michael Wiley

  ‘That’s OK – the FBI cleared her.’

  ‘You don’t understand. She disappeared.’

  ‘That’s her right.’

  ‘Someone took her.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘I’m standing in her living room, aren’t I?’

  ‘I don’t know, are you?’ Johnson said.

  Kelson tried to explain, but when he told her that Emma Almonte stepped outside of her own house, leaving him and Rodman behind, Johnson said, ‘I don’t know – after a few days with the FBI, people get screwy.’

  ‘You’re ignoring what I’m telling you,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe you should take that as a hint,’ Johnson said.

  When he called Ed Davies, Davies showed more concern but said, ‘There’s little I can do. You can file a missing person report, but considering all she’s gone through with her brother and the ugly news coverage and the crank phone calls, the cops will make this low priority. Good sense for her to go into hiding.’

  ‘They should take it seriously because of all she’s gone through,’ Kelson said.

  ‘You sure she didn’t walk away?’ Davies said.

  ‘I’m sure, dammit.’

  The more worked up Kelson got, the more composed Davies became. ‘I’ll make a few calls. But keep your expectations low.’

  ‘That’s how I live,’ Kelson said.

  Kelson drove back toward Bronzeville. Beside him, Rodman thumbed through Emma Almonte’s phone history.

  ‘Victor called Emma about thirty hours before the library blew up,’ Rodman said. ‘They talked for eighteen minutes. Last call before that was four and a half hours earlier. They talked for eleven minutes. The day before, six minutes.’

  ‘What’s that tell you?’ Kelson said.

  ‘Nothing. They talked, is all. Afghanistan might’ve traumatized him, but he could lean on her.’

  ‘Who else did she talk to?’

  ‘Two calls from David Jenkins at the FBI. Both of them this morning. Each less than a minute. Some other names I don’t recognize – one call each. Mostly three to five minutes. A gynecologist yesterday.’ He closed call history, checked text messages, and said, ‘Nothing here.’ He went to voicemail and played a four-second message from Victor, recorded a week before the blast. His voice was thick and sleepy but with an anxious edge. ‘Hi, Em – when’ll you be home?’

  ‘Ghost voice,’ Rodman said.

  ‘A ghost on Xanax,’ Kelson said.

  Rodman played the next message, which Victor recorded just ten minutes after the first. ‘Halogen floods. Ninety watt.’ His voice pitched high on the word ‘watt’.

  Rodman played it again, and said, ‘They must’ve talked between messages. Sounds like he’s asking her to pick up bulbs for the security lights.’

  ‘I guess he couldn’t see his PTSD hallucinations in the dark,’ Kelson said.

  Rodman played a recording from two days later. It repeated the earlier message – ‘Halogen floods. Ninety watt.’ But this time Victor’s voice pitched high on both ‘floods’ and ‘watt’.

  ‘That’s just weird,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Compulsion,’ Rodman said. ‘Unless he and his sister burned through a lot of bulbs.’

  ‘Or someone kept breaking them – like tonight.’

  Rodman played the last voicemail, recorded on the morning of the blast. Now Victor’s voice sounded firm and confident. ‘I’ll get the floods,’ he said.

  ‘Ha,’ Kelson said. ‘Sounds like he got his drugs right.’

  ‘Or found a purpose,’ Rodman said.

  ‘Blowing up a library?’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know.’

  They went up to Rodman’s apartment. Doreen, Cindi, and Genevieve Bower sat together on the couch watching Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure on Netflix. Kelson and Rodman stood inside the door and watched them watch. Rodman’s snub-nose Colt lay out of reach on the dining table.

  ‘Life confuses me,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Escapism,’ Doreen said a half hour later, as Kelson drove to her apartment. Rodman and Cindi had made the couch into a bed for Genevieve Bower when the movie ended. ‘And anyway, the young Keanu Reeves, right?’

  ‘I guess,’ Kelson said, ‘but what if you can’t escape?’

  ‘There’s always alcohol and sex.’

  ‘Alcohol didn’t work so well for Genevieve Bower last night.’

  ‘There’s always sex. You want to come up?’

  He did.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said at two in the morning, her ass pressed against his naked belly.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she said.

  He got up in the dark, went into her bathroom, and showered. When he came back, dressed, she was sleeping. He hung his face over hers until the shape of her lips emerged from the dark. He touched his lips to hers and whispered, ‘Good night.’

  ‘Good night … Keanu,’ she said.

  He drove home and parked on the gravel lot behind his building. He went in through the lobby, rode the elevator, and wandered down the hall to his apartment.

  As he put the key in the lock, he heard a sound inside. He sighed. ‘Just when you think …’ He removed the key and pulled his KelTec from his belt. He listened at the door. He heard a rustling – a soft voice – and then a long meow. ‘Huh,’ he said, and he tucked his pistol back in his belt and opened the door.

  Sue Ellen, wearing the pajamas she kept at the apartment, was lying on her back on the carpet. She held Payday above her in her left hand. She tossed Painter’s Lane a few inches in the air above her right hand. When she turned to see Kelson coming in, the kitten landed on the carpet, rolled, and sprang on to her belly, as if demanding to be tossed again.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Kelson said.

  Sue Ellen smiled up at him. ‘I’m teaching them to juggle.’

  ‘It’s almost three in the morning—’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘At – why are you here?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep, so I came over to play with the kittens.’

  ‘Does your mom know you’re here?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  Three hours later, Kelson called Nancy, waking her five minutes before her alarm would go off.

  She picked up the phone and mumbled, ‘You know I hate when you do this.’

  He’d learned in their years together that he couldn’t expect a kind word so early in the day. On another morning he might screw with her and say, Quick, check if Sue Ellen’s in bed. But after so little sleep and a hard day before it, he was wiped out. So he said, ‘Sue Ellen snuck out last night. She’s sleeping in my bed right now. I’ll take her to school.’

  Only half awake, Nancy repeated what he told her almost word for word. Then her anger flashed. ‘You’ve got to stop encouraging her to do this.’

  ‘To do what?’ When Kelson and Nancy were together, he loved that she could kick his ass, but sometimes she perplexed him.

  ‘You treat her like a princess,’ she said. ‘No wonder she steps on you like—’

  ‘What? I should’ve kicked her out? And when did she ever step on me?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have invited her over.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be so inviting.’

  ‘I’ll spank her for you when she wakes up.’

  ‘Don’t you touch her.’

  ‘I’m going to hang up now,’ he said.

  She didn’t give him the chance. She hung up on him.

  Kelson fed the kittens, fed Sue Ellen, fed himself, and drove Sue Ellen to school. ‘Your mom says I need to stop being so inviting,’ he said, as she got out at Hayt Elementary.

  ‘What does that even mean?’ Sue Ellen looked well-rested and well-fed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I guess it means you shouldn’t sneak out at night.’

  ‘I already knew that.’

  ‘Tell her, not me.’
>
  He drove to his office, checked his pistols, took out his laptop, and turned it on. As it booted up, he closed his eyes.

  Twenty minutes later, his ringing phone woke him – mostly. He was dreaming about the night Nancy did a striptease to Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.’ He answered the phone, ‘Shake it, shake it, baby.’

  David Jenkins from the FBI said, ‘What?’

  Kelson shook himself awake. ‘Do you ever get the sense your life goes in circles?’

  ‘No,’ Jenkins said. ‘What’s this about Emma Almonte?’

  ‘She walked out of her house yesterday when I was talking with her. She disappeared.’

  ‘We released her,’ Jenkins said, as if Kelson was accusing him.

  ‘I know you did. Someone else has her. Harold and Sylvia Crane, or their security men.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘They own an investment firm, and they—’

  ‘Why would they want Emma Almonte?’ The FBI man was losing interest fast.

  ‘Let me meet with you for an hour,’ Kelson said. ‘I’ll lay the thing out.’

  ‘You know how busy I am?’ Jenkins said. ‘You know how many jerks in this city think they’ve got the lead that’ll explain why Victor Almonte did this – because their next-door neighbor’s keeping the lights on late, or their cornflakes make a face when they add milk, or their tropical fish squawk them the clue?’

  ‘Fish don’t—’

  ‘You know how many jerks think their brother’s the next Unabomber?’

  ‘You don’t want to meet with me?’

  ‘We determined that Emma Almonte knew nothing about Victor’s plans.’

  ‘Somebody else seems to think she knew something.’

  ‘We don’t,’ Jenkins said.

  ‘Why did you—’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Kelson.’

  ‘You called Emma Almonte twice yesterday,’ he said. ‘Why? If you’re done with her, why call?’

  Jenkins went quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘How do you know I called yesterday?’

  ‘I saw the records. I have her phone.’

  ‘She disappeared and then you stole her phone?’

  ‘No – well, yes, but no. I took it. DeMarcus Rodman and I did.’

  ‘Goddammit – you’ve got no business touching any of this. Look, I can’t talk to you about it. Do yourself a favor – stay away from it. That’s what your friend Venus Johnson told you, right?’

  ‘Venus Johnson wouldn’t say I’m a friend. Why did you call Emma Almonte?’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Kelson,’ Jenkins said, and this time he hung up.

  Kelson stared at his phone, then turned his chair and looked at the pictures of Sue Ellen and the kittens. He aimed a finger at the one of Payday and Painter’s Lane and said, ‘Pow.’

  He turned back to his desk. ‘I don’t know why,’ he said, then googled one of the names Emma Almonte gave him – Debbie Turner. It was a common name – too common – and he got a hundred sixty thousand hits, including ones for a child actress who played Marta in the film The Sound of Music. Kelson started humming ‘The Hills Are Alive’. He googled Debbie Turner’s name plus the word ‘Jalalabad’ and got an MSN article titled ‘Feds Investigating Deputy’s Death in Sperm Bank Mishap’. Kelson told his computer, ‘I didn’t see that coming.’ He read the article. It never mentioned a Debbie Turner. It never mentioned Jalalabad.

  He scrolled through the other links. The only promising one showed a picture of a Debbie Turner in the online alumni magazine of the Georgia Military College, which also included a profile of a man who’d served as an advisor in Jalalabad. Kelson spent five minutes with the magazine before saying, ‘Nah.’

  Emma Almonte had said Richard Gentian lived in Indiana with his family. That combination gave Kelson a twenty-seven-year-old in Indianapolis. Gentian’s Instagram pictures showed a tall, straw-haired man playing basketball with friends and goofing around with a German Shepherd. ‘Looks like corn bread,’ Kelson said. Another site seemed to show that Gentian worked as a maintenance technician for a company called Camp Insulation. Kelson saw nothing that eliminated him absolutely from setting up Victor Almonte with a backpack bomb but nothing that made him a likely player either.

  According to Emma Almonte, Victor had planned to get together with Ramsey Garner but wanted to stay away from Carlos Rivera, who’d just gotten out of the service and might live downstate. Kelson googled Ramsey Garner. The name got over a thousand hits, so he added the word ‘Chicago’, clicked on the first link – for a Facebook page – and said, ‘Oh shit.’ The red-haired, freckled man Rodman backfisted and then punched into a wall at the G&G offices stared back at him.

  Kelson spent the next half hour making a list of everything he could find out about Garner. It added up to little. The man was twenty-six years old. He’d served one tour in Iraq and three in Afghanistan, the last two as an ordnance disposal specialist. Now he lived in a house on West Peterson in the northwest corner of the city, two blocks from the Interstate. He worked by contract for a firm called KVC Security Services, Inc. Facebook pictures showed him driving a black Jeep Wrangler with a bumper sticker that said Póg mo thóin – Irish for ‘Kiss my ass’, Kelson learned when he googled it. Kelson found no mention of a girlfriend – or boyfriend – or family. Garner seemed to like guns. His pictures showed him at a gun range, at an outdoor training exercise, and shirtless at a kitchen table with an assault rifle. Kelson told the picture at the kitchen table, ‘Hate to say it, Ramsey, but you look like a dick.’

  Kelson found Garner’s home phone number and dialed it. When the call went to voicemail, he said to the recorder, ‘What did Victor do to deserve this?’ He left his name and number and added, ‘Call me.’

  Then he looked up KVC Security. They had Chicago, Los Angeles, and London offices, the Chicago location in Northbrook, halfway between the city and G&G. ‘Why not?’ Kelson said. He wrote down the Northbrook address, turned off the computer, slid his KelTec back into his belt, then took it out and said, ‘Stupid – walking into a beefcake security company asking to get shot.’ He strapped the pistol under the desktop and started toward his office door. ‘Stupid,’ he said again, and returned to his desk. He turned on his laptop and googled the name Carlos Rivera. ‘Because – if …’ he said.

  Google gave him over four hundred thousand hits for the name. A narrowed search that added ‘Jalalabad’ and ‘ordnance’ produced just two – one of them with a picture of a Puerto Rican soldier from Marion, Illinois. The picture looked like no one Kelson had seen at G&G or anywhere else. ‘Better to know than not,’ he said, and turned off the computer again.

  But as he stood to leave, someone knocked on his office door.

  He felt a momentary, baseless fear, and froze at his desk. Then he said, ‘Stupid,’ and went to the door.

  Two men and a woman stared at him. They probably were in their fifties but had the kind of clear, smooth, childish skin that never seems to age until a last illness, if then. The men were thin and wore neatly tailored navy blue suits. One had on a white Oxford shirt and patterned tie, the other a pale blue Oxford and a steel blue tie. The one in the blue shirt had a white pocket square and a silver tie clip the shape of a golf club. ‘Natty,’ Kelson said to him. The woman wore a red skirt and jacket, with white hems and lapels. She had tiny but very fancy red shoes. ‘Petite,’ he said to her.

  That brought neither a smile nor a frown to her face.

  The man in the white Oxford said, ‘Mr Kelson?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’re the Winsins.’ As if the name should mean something. ‘May we talk?’

  ‘Your voice sounds like money,’ Kelson said, ‘or like you’re trying to sound like it.’

  ‘Which means?’ the other man asked.

  ‘Come in.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘Are those Jimmy Choos?’ Kelson asked the woman when they were sitting. She set her feet side by side, neat enough to ski.

  ‘Never,’ she
said, as though he should know better.

  ‘What’s wrong with Jimmy Choos?’

  ‘Nothing – if you wear Jimmy Choos.’

  ‘Which you don’t?’ Kelson said.

  ‘I would hope not.’

  ‘I have no idea what that means. Am I supposed to call you “Winsin”, or do you have a first name to go with the last?’

  ‘People who work for us usually call me Ms Winsin.’

  ‘First, I’m not working for you. Second, I have almost zero control over how I speak.’

  ‘We prefer that you try,’ the white Oxford said.

  ‘See, a couple years ago, I got shot in the—’

  ‘We’ve looked into your background,’ the blue Oxford said.

  ‘My name is Christine,’ the woman said. ‘Chris, if you prefer.’

  ‘Bob,’ said the white Oxford.

  ‘David,’ said the blue Oxford.

  ‘Well, David, Bob, and Christine, I’m buried to my ears in a couple of jobs right now. What do you think I can do for you?’

  ‘We hope to bury you a little deeper in one of them,’ the woman said. ‘We would like you to locate a gentleman named Marty LeCoeur.’

  ‘What do you want with him?’ Kelson said.

  Bob Winsin folded his fingers over his belly. ‘We’ve invested money through G&G Private Equity – money that G&G seems to have misplaced. We understand that Marty LeCoeur represents our best chance of getting our money back.’

  ‘How much money?’

  ‘Will you help find him?’ he said.

  Kelson said, ‘Did you get Marty’s name from the Cranes?’

  ‘We did,’ he said.

  Kelson said, ‘The Cranes couldn’t get Marty to find your money, and they’re vicious. What makes you think you can do it?’

  Christine Winsin tapped the toes of her tiny shoes on the carpet as if they were windup toys. ‘Harry and Sylvia Crane are tightlipped about everything they do at their firm. They put buffers throughout their investment and distribution processes. That’s the main reason we’ve used their services. But they gave us Marty LeCoeur’s name – and yours – with hardly a protest.’