Stone Cribs: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “There’s not much to do here,” I said.

  “Here, yeah, there isn’t a lot to do.” Johnson looked at his hands. They were big and scarred, the hands of a man who had always worked for his living. “But I’m not too good at sitting around.”

  I nodded. I didn’t know anyone who was—at least in these circumstances.

  “All day I’ve been thinking I should go to my strengths.” He rubbed his hands together, then looked at me. “No matter what, no matter how much I want it, I’m not getting Val back. I know that. And this might change it, I know that, too. She’ll need someone to take care of her for a while. I can do that.”

  I didn’t argue with him. I didn’t really know Valentina Wilson and, as he said, people changed after traumatic events. Maybe she would want him at her side again. He would certainly be a good protector.

  “But if she doesn’t make it, and I have a hunch she’s not going to, I still got to help. I’ve got to find a way to be useful here.”

  This time, when he used “here,” he didn’t mean in the hospital. It was a Chicago colloquialism, one that was creeping into my speech as well.

  “So,” Johnson said, “this is my proposal. I want you to hear me out before you say anything.”

  “All right.” I folded my hands on the tabletop, wishing I could bolt.

  “This is what I figure,” he said. “Val’s here because of two problems. First, there’s the person with the knife pretending to be a real doctor. What galls me most is that Val paid money to this person and ended up here.”

  “You know that for a fact?” I asked.

  “You were going to wait until I was done,” he snapped.

  I nodded. He wasn’t in a mood to be trifled with.

  “Second,” he said, frowning at me as if he expected me to talk over him, “there’s the asshole that caused this problem in the first place. Marvella says she don’t know anything about it, but I think she’s lying. Doesn’t matter. I’ll find this guy—”

  “And then what?” I asked.

  Johnson glared at me.

  I held up my hands. “I know, I know. I wasn’t going to ask questions, but Truman, even if you do find him, it’s Val’s word against his. There’s no police report from the incident, which had to be two months ago or more. And there’s probably no witnesses. Hearsay won’t stand. So there’s no real way to charge him.”

  “You gonna listen or not?” He asked this very softly. “Because if you’re not, I’m going to get up, I’m going to thank you for this lovely meal and for coming here to check on my wife, and I’m going to walk away.”

  It was my opportunity. I could say that I didn’t want to hear any more—and I didn’t—or I could tell him that I needed to pick up Jimmy, which I would have to do soon anyway.

  But I didn’t take advantage of the moment. As difficult as my relationship with Johnson had been, he had come through for me. I could at least listen to him, and maybe try to talk him out of something he would later regret.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Okay.” He leaned back in his chair, and did a sideways glance around the room. He didn’t even move his head as he looked. It was a cop maneuver, and he was good at it.

  When he seemed satisfied that no one was listening, he continued.

  “I know the problems,” he said. “I’m saving the other guy until she wakes up. Then Val can direct me. If he’s a drifter, someone who’s clearly not in town any more, then I’ll let it go. But if he can hurt her again, I’m going to make sure he doesn’t. Whatever it takes. You got that?”

  I nodded once, biting back the question I wanted to ask. I wasn’t sure what “whatever it takes” meant. I wasn’t sure how far Johnson would go to protect someone. Marvella had seemed convinced that he would kill someone who had hurt a person he loved.

  And she knew Johnson better than I did.

  “So,” Johnson said, “I figure I’m going to start with this so-called doctor. I know who Val knows. I’ll see if I can track this person down, and put him out of business. That’s where you come in.”

  “Me?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “See, here’s my problem. A lot of these guys—most of them—pay protection, so I can’t just go in and arrest them without stepping on someone else’s turf.”

  I gripped my hands tightly together. Johnson spoke so calmly about “protection,” as if it didn’t bother him. It bothered me. I hated the way that cops took money to look the other way.

  “Besides, if I get in too deep and I piss someone off, they’ll come looking for why, which’ll lead them to Val. I have the doctor here working with me—”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “—so right now, Val is covered. But if I start looking under these particular rocks, then someone will find her. I don’t want her charged. Hell, I don’t want her embarrassed, and she will be if this ever gets out.”

  He paused and took a pretend sip from his empty coffee cup. When he got the dregs out, he stood.

  “Be right back,” he said, and went to pour himself another cup.

  I could have used one, too, but I didn’t follow him. I didn’t like the direction in which this was heading. I didn’t want to tell Johnson that I was already looking for the abortionist. Then Johnson would want to help me.

  As volatile as he was right now, he would only get in my way. Or he would ask me to do something I didn’t want to do.

  Johnson had asked me to play vigilante for him in the past, and I had always refused. I knew that I confused him. I didn’t follow a lot of the legalities and formalities of the world, but I liked to think of myself as a man who believed in justice. And, much as I hated the system, I always felt it was best to try going through that system first. If the system failed, then sometimes a man had to take things into his own hands. But even then, the rule wasn’t absolute. As far as I was concerned, only in times of dire emergency could a man become a law unto himself.

  Johnson returned carrying a full coffee cup and a chocolate-chip cookie.

  He took a bite, wiped the crumbs off his face, and said, “A guy like the one that mutilated Val this weekend leaves a trail. Lots of injured women, maybe even a death or two. Here’s where you come in. You’re good at this kind of digging. If we can find those, we might have a case against him. Then we start looking for Asshole Number Two.”

  I didn’t know how to say no without mentioning Marvella, so I argued with his methodology instead. “So,” I said, “it’s all right to drag these other women through the hell of public exposure, but it’s not okay to mention Val, a case against this person, whoever he is, that we actually have dead to rights?”

  “I’m not going to do that to her,” Johnson said.

  “Why not? She made the same choice as the other women.”

  Johnson glared at me. “Val stays protected.”

  “And these other women aren’t worth protecting? They probably have families, too, people who care about them, people who probably don’t even know what they’ve done or why. Why should we drag those people in? Is it fair to step into their lives when you’re not willing to do the same thing in your own?”

  Johnson flattened his hands on the table. The movement jostled the coffee cups, sloshing coffee all over the surface.

  I grabbed a napkin and started to clean up. Johnson grabbed my wrist hard enough to cut off the circulation to my hand, making me stop.

  “I’m a cop,” he said softly. “She’s a cop’s wife. How is that going to look, especially if she has to sit in front of some judge and explain what happened to her?”

  His fingers dug into my skin, but I didn’t look at them. Instead, I met his gaze.

  “Are you worried about her or about yourself?” I asked.

  “About her,” he said.

  “Then stay here. Wait for the doctors to tell you she’s going to be all right. When she wakes up, see what she wants.”

  “Meantime, this butch
er mutilates how many other women?” Johnson asked.

  That was Marvella’s argument, and the reason I was helping her. But this wasn’t going to be as fast or as easy an investigation as either Marvella or Johnson thought it would be.

  “What this guy does and who he hurts is a different issue,” I said, “and one you guys should think about every time you take protection money.”

  I regretted the sentence the moment I uttered it.

  Johnson let go of my wrist. “You guys?”

  “Figure of speech,” I said, resisting the urge to rub my skin where his fingers had dug into it. But my opinion had slipped out. I didn’t approve of the fact that it was the police who allowed this corruption to continue.

  Without police protection, abortionists like the one who had hurt Valentina Wilson would be out of business.

  “You think I’m on the take?” Johnson asked.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You said I take protection money.” His voice was so soft I barely heard it.

  “You’re the one who brought it up,” I said.

  “I didn’t say I took it. I said that I worried about getting into other people’s turf.”

  “I know what you said.” I leaned closer to him. Even though we were speaking softly, we were attracting attention. Probably because we were two black men, obviously angry, in the middle of a room full of people. “If you’re worried about their turf, then you’re helping them protect it.”

  “No,” he snapped, “I’m protecting mine. They’ll go after Val.”

  “It looks like someone already did.”

  That silenced him. The spilled coffee started dripping onto the floor, making an annoying splat-splat sound.

  I used my sopping napkin to soak up what I could, then I went to the counter beside the trays and got a few more napkins. By the time I came back, Johnson was gone.

  I let out a small sigh. I had handled that badly. All I had tried to do was keep Johnson from investigating—and prevent him from finding out that I was investigating.

  Instead, I had made him angry.

  I wiped up the mess, including the floor, then piled the sodden napkins onto a tray, and carried both trays to the window that opened into the kitchen. Then I walked out of the cafeteria into the corridor. Even more people filled the hall, apparently visitors who had just gotten off work, and were coming to see friends and family.

  For a moment, I debated returning to the waiting room, and seeing if Johnson was all right. I stopped, looked in that direction, and realized that Johnson wasn’t the only one who was angry.

  If I went to the waiting room, I’d just continue the fight. And even though I knew a lot of Johnson’s fury and frustration came from the situation, I wasn’t sure I was level enough to remember that when he started demanding things of me.

  He needed to focus on Valentina anyway. He wouldn’t be doing anything else that night. Then Marvella would force him to get a good night’s sleep, and by tomorrow, he might have forgotten this crazy plan.

  At least that was what I hoped as I walked toward the front door, not realizing how wrong I was.

  TWELVE

  THAT NIGHT, I fielded several phone calls. One was from Southside, which had three more jobs for me even though I hadn’t finished the most recent two; another was from a man who wanted me to help him find some missing land deeds; and one was from a man who wanted someone to tail his wife because he thought she was having an affair.

  I put the insurance jobs off until later in the week, which was fine with Southside. The company was in no hurry. I told the man who needed the land deeds that I could help him, but he would be better off with an attorney. He said he would consider that, and get back to me. And I told the final man that I didn’t do divorces—which wasn’t exactly a lie, since I hadn’t done one yet in Chicago, although I had done quite a few in Memphis—and gave him the name of the best black detective agency in town.

  Jimmy didn’t say anything, even when I wasn’t on the phone. He ate his dinner in silence, no matter how I tried to draw him out. He said he wasn’t angry at me—even seemed shocked at the idea of it—but he wouldn’t look at me, either.

  And this avoidance was different than what he had done earlier in the winter, when he had been embarrassed about being recruited by the Blackstone Rangers. Then he had spoken to me, just avoided certain topics.

  Now he wasn’t talking at all.

  So I watched him eat, as if by studying him I could see what was wrong. He was bigger than he had been a year ago, and he was starting to get that lankiness that came with adolescence. He still had a little boy’s face, though, with its soft skin and round cheeks.

  I wanted to rub my knuckles against those cheeks, a gentle gesture, just so that he would know he was loved, but I knew better. He had pulled away from me all day. I didn’t want him to do so again.

  I wasn’t sure my heart could take it.

  He ignored my stare and finished his dinner. Then he did his homework, and wanted to settle in for our nightly reading session. We had started reading The Wind in the Willows the week before, even though Jimmy had complained that it looked like a baby book.

  I had thought it looked too young for him, but Grace Kirkland had pulled me aside in early March and recommended that I read fantasy novels to him.

  He gets enough reality in his own life, she said. He needs some kind of escape.

  She had given me a reading list that I was dutifully working my way through, despite Jimmy’s protests. Still, he was the one who dragged out the thick green-covered book every night and waited for me. He hadn’t done that with anything else we had read. He also put the book away in his room when we were finished, so no one would see it.

  I didn’t allow phone calls to interrupt dinner or the reading, which we shared—him doing what he could (without me correcting him) and me taking over when he got tired. But the phone rang four times during supper and five more times during our reading session, and that wasn’t unusual.

  What was unusual was that I wanted to answer, worrying about Marvella and Johnson, and their reactions should Valentina Wilson die.

  Finally, Jimmy went to bed. As I turned out his light, the phone rang. It was Laura.

  “You need an answering service,” she said with a laugh. We both knew how likely that was. “I’ve been calling all day.”

  “Problem?” I asked, mostly because the day had been about problems. Hell, the last twenty-four hours had been about problems.

  “Not really,” she said. “I just wanted to find out how our friend is.”

  She meant Valentina Wilson. So I updated her, although I didn’t tell her about my discussion with Johnson. However, I did tell her that Marvella had hired me.

  “Is that wise, Smokey?” Laura said. “I mean, what are you going to do when you find this guy?”

  “Marvella says she’ll make sure no one goes to him. She’s also going to tell Rothstein, to see if he’ll press charges.” Although I was beginning to realize, after talking with Johnson, that that particular ploy wouldn’t work. Johnson didn’t want Valentina’s experience to become public knowledge.

  “I wish her luck,” Laura said.

  “She gave me a list,” I said. “Two actually. One of people she recommended and one of people she didn’t. Can you do the same for me?”

  There was a long silence, then Laura said, “I haven’t done this for a while.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’ll cross-check, maybe get some leads from a few other people. I feel like I’m looking for a needle in a haystack as it is. Maybe if I have a few more names, I might be able to make some headway.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Laura said. “There are some women I know who are trying to do what Marvella’s doing, only in a more organized fashion. I’ll get some names from them.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “It’s the least I can do,” she said. “I hate problems like this. There seems to be no real solutio
n.”

  “I know,” I said. It seemed, lately, like my life was full of those kinds of problems. I found myself wishing for a simple problem with a simple solution.

  But those didn’t come along much any more. I wasn’t even sure I’d recognize them if they did.

  * * *

  The next day dawned cloudy and muggy, with the threat of rain in the air. I was still on driving duty, and somehow, even though Jimmy and I were both running late, we managed to get to the Grimshaws’ on time.

  Lacey wasn’t feeling well, and was staying home from school. Unfortunately, her father had called her illness the “girl flu” to explain it to me. Norene and Mikie had overheard him, and spent the drive to school asking if they would contract it.

  I kept reassuring them that they wouldn’t—at least, not for another few years, but I didn’t tell them that last part. I was a friend of the family, not the person who was supposed to explain the facts of life. I would have to do that for Jimmy soon enough, although I suspected he knew more about the facts of life than I did, thanks to that mother of his.

  Jimmy and Keith spent the entire drive in discussion about the new baseball season. It was good to hear Jimmy talk to someone, and so while I fended off the little girls, I enjoyed listening to his conversation.

  As we pulled up to the school, the playground was full of boys wearing red tams. I hated the Stones’ presence here, but didn’t know how to make it go away. At least, since I had traded information with them last year, they were living up to our agreement and leaving all of the Grimshaw children alone.

  I had no idea how long that particular truce would last.

  Once I got the kids safely into the building, I headed back to the West Side. If I finished with the house, then I could work on Marvella’s case for the rest of the week. I knew finding the man who had injured Val might take days—or maybe even weeks.

  I hoped by then she would be awake. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if she died.

  It took me nearly an hour to get from one side of town to the other. Morning traffic was tied up in the Loop, reminding me why I usually spent the first few hours of my day in the apartment finishing paperwork.