Stone Cribs: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “It’s a start,” I said.

  An orderly walked by. He looked at us, but didn’t say anything.

  I waited until he was out of sight before speaking again. “You’re probably going to be mad at me, but I went to Val’s apartment.”

  “You what?”

  My only hope was to slide past that part as quickly as possible. “And it’s full of flowers, all of them from Vitel. One of them had this note.”

  I handed it to her. Marvella read it, and turned ashen.

  “He’s going to come here?” she asked.

  “He might,” I said. “I need to know who he is. I need to know if I’m right about him. If we’re going to protect her, Marvella, we have to have the facts now.”

  “Dammit,” she said.

  Her hand, clutching the note, shook. Her eyes moved back and forth as she debated with herself. I waited, hoping she would think this through and come up with the right answer.

  “You really think he killed Truman?” Marvella asked.

  “He might have ordered the hit,” I said. “Think about it. If Val knows something about this guy, she might have remained silent, not to keep Truman out of her life, but to protect him.”

  “Because this guy is involved with gangs?” Marvella read the note again. “And he ordered a hit on Truman?”

  I nodded.

  “If that’s true, then we don’t have any options,” Marvella said. “If Truman can’t protect Val, then who can?”

  Present tense. I wondered if she had even known she had used it.

  Johnson couldn’t protect anyone any more.

  “We don’t know what’s true and what’s not,” I said. “Only Val does.”

  Marvella kept staring at the note.

  “Look,” I said. “For all we know, Truman might have gone down to the Gaza Strip to follow up on this case, and gotten killed because of some other case he was working on. At this point, anything is possible. The one thing I am certain of is that this Vitel is dangerous to Val, and he might come here now that Truman’s gone. You have to know that.”

  “You’re not going to tell Val that she’s in danger,” Marvella said.

  “All I’m going to do is ask her if he was the one who attacked her.”

  Marvella nodded. “Make it quick, and don’t tell her about Truman, either.”

  “Thank you.”

  She waved a finger in my face. “Remember.”

  “I will.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to see what I can do about keeping her protected. Maybe hospital security will keep an extra eye on the room.”

  Then she hurried down the hall. I watched her go.

  After Marvella turned the corner, I pushed the room door open. The scents of rubbing alcohol and illness hit me again. The room had a twilight grayness—morning light was trying to filter through the orange curtains over the outside window, and hallway light blended through the brown curtains over the inside window.

  The room was warm—I had no idea how Marvella had slept under a blanket—and oddly humid.

  I sat in the wooden chair someone had pushed next to the bed. I hadn’t realized this was a private room until just now. It was probably a recovery room used for extremely ill patients. Marvella didn’t have to tell me to go lightly. It was clear that Valentina was still very sick.

  The tubes sticking out of Valentina’s arm had bruised her skin. The remains of nail polish colored her fingertips, which rested on top of her own rubber blanket.

  I reached across the metal railings and gently took the hand nearest mine. Her skin was cool, which I hadn’t expected. I thought she would feel feverish.

  “Valentina?” I said softly.

  She didn’t move.

  “Valentina, can you wake up?”

  She moaned and slid her hand away from mine. With her other hand, the one not tied to a legion of tubes, she wiped off her face.

  Then she turned her head slowly and looked at me, blinking herself awake.

  I didn’t know how many painkillers she had taken or how clear her perceptions were. I didn’t want to frighten her.

  “I don’t know if you remember me, Val,” I said gently. “I’m Bill Grimshaw, Marvella’s neighbor. My friend Laura and I found you Sunday night.”

  Valentina frowned. “I thought Smokey found me.”

  “They call me that sometimes,” I said.

  “Then who’s Dalton?”

  I started. Laura had used my full name that night. I had forgotten.

  “Marvella gave me permission to talk to you, but only for a few minutes,” I said, ignoring that last question. “I have something really painful to ask you, and I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t important.”

  Her expression grew wary. She blinked again, as if she were trying to clear cobwebs from her brain.

  “The man who attacked you a couple of months ago,” I said, “was his name Armand Vitel?”

  She closed her eyes and licked her dry lips. I grabbed the glass beside the bed.

  “I have water,” I said.

  She opened her eyes, didn’t meet my gaze, and grabbed the glass with her good hand. Then she tried to inch herself upright. I put a hand behind her neck and held her up so that she could take a drink.

  Even though she was medicated, even though she had just awakened, she seemed more alert than I expected, as if she were stalling.

  Then she handed me the glass. “Where’s Marvella?”

  “She had to talk to hospital security. I found some stuff that leads me to believe Vitel might come here.”

  Valentina bit her lower lip.

  “Marvella and I won’t let him. We’re doing everything we can to prevent it. But I need to know if he was the one who—” I found I couldn’t be as blunt as I wanted to. “—who got you into this situation.”

  “Raped me,” Valentina whispered. “He raped me, Mr. Grimshaw.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter, even though we both knew that it did.

  “Why didn’t you tell Truman?” I asked.

  She plucked at the blanket. “What could he do? I met Armand at a dance. We were seen together. He sent me flowers and letters. It would be his word against mine. And, believe me, his word would win.”

  It usually did in these cases. Few rapes ever came to trial, and if there were no witnesses, it always came down to which party was the most credible. The victim had her entire life’s history paraded before the court. Most of the accused’s life history—particularly his arrest record—often was excluded under the rules of evidence.

  Valentina’s history probably wouldn’t seem that sympathetic. She was black, lived alone, and she was divorced, which many still saw as a sign of promiscuity.

  But the way she answered my question bothered me. Not her words—which were nearly identical to Marvella’s—but her attitude. She wasn’t telling me everything.

  “Truman might have been able to take care of the problem privately, had you thought of that?” I asked.

  “I was afraid of that,” she said. “He has to stay away from Armand. Armand hates him.”

  “Truman can take care of himself.” I had to struggle with both the present tense and the sentiment. In this case, Johnson hadn’t been able to take care of himself.

  She stopped plucking at the blanket. She shoved her pillow back with her elbows, propping herself up more efficiently than I had done. Even though she was small and thin, she didn’t seem frail.

  “Tell me something,” she said. “I know Marvella wants to keep me all cocooned and safe, but I have to know. Truman’s dead, isn’t he?”

  It was my turn to be surprised. It must have shown on my face, because her mouth turned downward.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and my voice broke. I cleared my throat, swallowed, and spoke in a firmer tone. “Marvella made me promise not to tell you.”

  “How?” Valentina whispered, and she wasn’t talking about Marvella.


  “He was shot,” I said, deciding to leave out as many details as possible.

  “When?”

  It was harder for me to answer that. I felt like it had been weeks ago, even though it had been less than twenty-four hours. “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “I thought so.” Her eyes were dry. She nodded, just a little, then sighed. “When I was—asleep, you know?—I thought I heard something like that. And when I asked about him, Marvella acted weird.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She shook her head. “He found out, didn’t he? About Armand.”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “And he was going to fix it.” She sounded bitter. “Goddammit, Truman.”

  We were both silent for a moment. Her reaction to Johnson’s death surprised me. I hadn’t expected her to be protecting him. I thought she was the angry wife who wanted nothing to do with him.

  She seemed calmer than I would have expected, given the news. Perhaps the drugs blunted her emotions—or perhaps she was waiting until she had a private moment to let her guard down.

  She was saying, “I managed to avoid Truman for the last few months so he didn’t know, because if he had found out, he would have done something. He did do something, didn’t he?”

  “He beat the hell out of Greg Nikolau,” I said.

  She smiled. It was a fond smile. “That was my mistake. I thought I could take care of this alone. And I knew Greg. The procedure isn’t complicated, and he’d done a few. I figured he’d be all right. I should have listened to Marvella.”

  “How come everyone refers to Marvella on this?” I asked.

  Valentina gave me a sideways glance. “She never told you?”

  “No,” I said. “Did she have a bad experience?”

  I meant the question euphemistically. I wasn’t quite able to ask if she had had an abortion too.

  “You could say that.” Valentina’s eyes narrowed. “She was eighteen and poor, and nearly died from appendicitis. She came out of the surgery missing one appendix and one uterus.”

  I went cold. “They can’t do that.”

  “They did,” she said. “They do, a lot. She signed something when she was that sick, and they figured why let a poor girl breed? You should check sometime. It happens all over—and not just to black girls. White ones, too, if they’ve had too many babies and they don’t have enough money.”

  I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around this. Too much had happened or I was too tired. “I don’t get it,” I said. “How does that tie to…what happened to you?”

  “Because Marvella, bless her, gets angry.” Valentina said this in a toneless voice. “And when she gets angry, she takes action. She’s been after legislators for years, talked to lawyers, and she keeps track of doctors and hospitals, which ones do these procedures, and which ones don’t, for whatever reason.”

  Valentina rubbed her hand on the blanket. So she wasn’t as calm as she appeared.

  “Turns out botched abortions are the most common justification.” A tear ran down her cheek but her voice didn’t change. “So Marvella started making lists of who did a good job, so a woman wouldn’t be in this—in my—you know.”

  She waved her hand at me. “I was stupid. I was stupid all around. I was stupid to dance with him, and stupid to not confide in Marvella.”

  But not, I noticed, stupid in failing to tell Johnson.

  “You were doing the best you could.”

  “I kept thinking of Truman. I wasn’t thinking about me. It’s like I wasn’t even involved in any of this. Cut off, you know?”

  I did know. I had felt that a time or two myself.

  “I still don’t understand,” I said. “What were you trying to protect Truman from? What was Armand into?”

  “Into?” Valentina blinked, frowned, as if she had to concentrate. “He’s into everything. Don’t you know who he is?”

  I shook my head. “I never heard of him before today.”

  “That explains it,” she said, more to herself than to me. “That’s why you thought you could protect me.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Armand Vitel,” she said. “He can get in anywhere.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because,” she said slowly as if she were speaking to a child, “Armand Vitel is a cop.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  WHATEVER I had expected Valentina to say, it hadn’t been that. I stood up, suddenly restless. The implications were larger than I wanted to consider. A cop, a gang hit—had I made the wrong assumption? Had Truman Johnson been killed because he was with someone else?

  Who was first out the door? I had asked the bartender.

  Couldn’t see it. Would’ve thought the other guy, because your friend waved to me, but don’t know that for sure.

  Didn’t know it for sure. But if it had been Johnson when everyone else had been expecting Armand Vitel, then the boys had hit the wrong man. Vitel would have saved his own life by coming back into the bar, getting his things, and going out the back door.

  The police wouldn’t have known, and the gangs wouldn’t have found out until it was too late.

  Valentina was wiping the tears off her face. “This is just an awful mess,” she said, “and no one can make it right.”

  “I know,” I said. “But you didn’t start it. Vitel did.”

  She ran her thumb under her lower eyelid. “You’re kind.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “None of this would have happened if he had left you alone.”

  “He’s not the type to leave people alone. God.” She wiped her other eye. “I’ve got to stop this, or Marvella will know you told me.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Marvella needs to do something right now. I’d rather have her take care of me than go after Armand.”

  “Don’t worry about Armand,” I said.

  “You can’t go after him.” Valentina reached for me. Her fingers were shaking. She wasn’t as strong as she was pretending to be. “Look what happened to Truman. You don’t know how smart he is.”

  She meant Vitel.

  “I don’t care how smart he is,” I said. “He loses control. Anyone who loses control isn’t all-powerful.”

  “But he covers it, and he’s ruthless.” Her hand caught my arm. “You can’t. Promise me you’ll stay away from him.”

  “You see how good I am at keeping promises.” I put my hand over hers. “I promised Marvella I wouldn’t tell you about Truman.”

  “Don’t,” Valentina said. “Don’t play these kinds of games. You don’t know who Vitel is.”

  “And he doesn’t know who I am, which gives me a hell of an advantage.” I eased Valentina’s hand off my arm. “Truman was a good cop. I’m not a cop at all. I don’t have to follow the same rules.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t do this for me.”

  “All right,” I said quietly. “I won’t. I’ll do it for Truman.”

  And then I walked out of the room.

  * * *

  Marvella came back just as I stepped out of the door. She looked tired and flustered. “How’s Val?”

  “Upset,” I said.

  “Understandably,” Marvella said. “She got upset just telling me a little bit about it on Sunday. Did she give you enough information?”

  I nodded. “Vitel’s a cop.”

  “Oh, God,” Marvella said. “Then the hospital won’t be able to do anything.”

  She was quick.

  “That’s right. You’re going to need your own guards,” I said, “and not just people like Shipley. You’ll need someone big, like me.”

  “You’re not staying?” Marvella asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’m going to work on it from a different angle.”

  And before she could ask me any more, I headed off down the hall.

  I needed information, and I wasn’t going to get it here. I had to find out who Vitel was, what his cases were, and how they
connected to Johnson. I also had to find out what kind of trouble I would be in if I took care of the problem myself.

  The elevator was fuller than it had been on the way up. Two nurses, their white uniforms ironed, their little caps starched, stood to one side. A man wearing a rumpled suit and reeking of cigar smoke leaned against the elevator wall.

  I stepped inside and rode down, staring at myself the whole way, a black smudge in the stainless steel doors.

  For the first time in months, I felt out of my depth. Valentina’s statement had the weight of history and Chicago politics, things I still wasn’t as up on as I should have been. The fact that Armand Vitel was a cop—and, I was assuming, a black cop, since no one had mentioned his color, and he attended the Nefertiti Ball, which had been a benefit for the South Side Community Art Center—shouldn’t have stopped Johnson from going after him.

  In fact, it should have made Johnson’s job easier. He could have used the letters as proof of unwanted attention, and gone to the union or to the Afro-American Patrolman’s League. The fact that Valentina felt he couldn’t, and that even knowing Vitel’s identity had been dangerous, meant there was something here I didn’t understand.

  So when the elevator stopped on the first floor, I went to the pay phone near the cafeteria, and called Jack Sinkovich.

  I didn’t have his home phone memorized, but he was listed—the phonebook was still my friend. The phone rang four times before someone picked up and fumbled against the receiver.

  A faraway voice cursed, then the phone line crinkled as the receiver moved.

  “What now?” Sinkovich’s sleepy voice asked.

  “I need a piece of information from you,” I said.

  “Je-Zus, Grimshaw, it’s six-forty-five A.M. My alarm is set for seven. Couldn’t you at least have waited till then? Don’t you fuckin’ know how awful it is to wake up fifteen goddamn minutes before the goddamn alarm? It’s a sign of how your entire day is gonna go. Shitty.”

  I waited until he paused for a breath before I said, “Who’s Armand Vitel?”

  “He’s a cop, you know that.” Sinkovich sounded even more annoyed.

  “I don’t know anything about him,” I said.

  “Yeah, you do. I introduced you to him yesterday.”