The Bad Kitty Lounge

by Michael Wiley

  I stepped into the room and pointed my Glock at the man’s back. “Put down the gun,” I said.

  They all looked at me at once. “I’m not putting down shit,” the man said.

  “I shoot you, you shoot my friend, and my friend shoots Robert. Who wins?” I said.

  A crazy little smile crossed his face. “No one wins, but I’ll tell you who loses. You do. You’re the only one that seems to care. I don’t give a shit if you shoot me. Your friend and Robert, they’re dead, so it don’t matter if they care. Who the hell cares?”

  “You hear that, Terrence? This man doesn’t care if you die.”

  “Yeah. No one’s insulted me like that since I was thirteen years old.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I broke a couple of the kid’s ribs. Didn’t mean to. I just hit him too hard.”

  I spoke to the man with the gun. “So, what’s the point of your speech other than you’re asking for broken ribs?”

  “Point is, if you don’t want me to put any holes in this big, fucking black man, you’ll put down your gun.” He shoved the barrel of his pistol further into Terrence’s back.

  It was a good point but I held my gun on him.

  His eyes twitched. He said, “I’m counting to three, and I shoot.”

  I let him get to two, then lowered my gun.

  “Your turn, big guy,” the man said to Terrence. “Put it down.”

  Terrence didn’t put down his gun. He removed his hand from Jarik’s chest and spun. His fist caught the man under the chin. The man’s head snapped back, his body rose, and his feet lifted off the floor. When he came down, his feet were no longer feet. They were just floppy things that eased his fall.

  Robert made a play for Terrence’s gun. It was a big mistake, as all things were big when dealing with Terrence. Terrence brought his free hand forward, grabbed Robert under the chin, and lifted him in the air. Terrence pressed his lips together but other than that showed no sign that he was working. Robert kicked at him but Terrence squeezed his throat and lifted him higher. Robert stopped kicking. Jarik glanced at the gun that his friend had dropped when Terrence hit him, then glanced at Terrence, and thought better than to go for it. I picked it up and tucked it in my waistband. When Terrence lowered Robert, his feet did him as much good as the other man’s. He fell on the floor and gasped.

  I glanced around the room. Two more guns sat on the counter by the refrigerator. I loaded my waistband with more steel.

  Then I aimed my Glock at Jarik’s middle and said, “The keys?”

  He pointed at Robert. “He’s got them.”

  “Get them.”

  He stooped and tried three of Robert’s pockets before he found a key ring.

  I left Terrence with him and his unconscious pals, and returned to Lucinda. She stretched spread-eagle on the bed while I unlocked her hands and feet. She rubbed her wrists, then picked up one of the chains and lowered its links into an open palm. The chain clinked out music like falling rain.

  She carried it with her into the kitchen. Terrence was relaxing in a chair at the table, and Jarik gave her an embarrassed smile. She swung the chain at him, missed, and wound up again. But she stopped herself short. “Nah,” she said, “you’re not worth it.” She threw the chain onto the table, looked at Robert and the other man on the floor. She nudged them with her toes to see if they were breathing. They groaned.

  I pointed at the man who’d threatened Terrence. “Who is he?”

  Jarik gave another embarrassed smile. “Robert’s cousin. Name’s Johnny. Sometimes he gets carried away.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. What’s he do in your organization?”

  “Mostly humiliates himself. He’s supposed to be a spokesman.”

  “Might do you some good if you could teach him to shut up.”

  Jarik got a glint in his eye. “See something of yourself in him?”

  Terrence, Lucinda, and I hoisted Robert and Johnny into kitchen chairs and told Jarik to sit with them. I held my Glock on them and gave Lucinda one of their guns. A few slaps on the cheeks brought Robert around. His cousin, Johnny, needed more prodding.

  The three of them looked at us, scowling, suspicious.

  I put my arm around Lucinda’s shoulders and said, “First lesson is never touch someone’s friends or family. It’s a losing game. Better to keep your hands to yourselves.”

  “Fuck off,” said Johnny. Terrence might have loosened some of his teeth but he spoke clearly enough.

  “Second lesson,” I said, “is never say, ‘Fuck off.’ ”

  He let one eye droop at me. “Fuck off.”

  Lucinda put on a wry smile. “Hey, there’s a lady present.”

  He turned to her. “Fuck off.”

  Terrence stepped over to him and hooked a foot around one of his chair legs. As gently as if he was scuffing the ground to clean a shoe, he kicked the chair out. Johnny crashed backward to the floor, sat for a few moments, set his chair upright, and sat again. He looked at Terrence and said, “Fuck off.”

  Terrence laughed at him.

  I said to Robert, “What do you get from Judy Terrano being dead?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing at all.”

  “You’re too nervous about me looking into the killing. You’ve got to be getting something from it. Sometimes I get hired to do claims investigation work for insurance companies, and you want to know how the guys behave when they’re trying to commit fraud? The amateurs, not the professionals? They behave like you. They run around like squirrels scared that someone’s going to take their nuts. So what are you getting?”

  “You tell us,” spat Johnny. “You got all the ideas. You come in here with the Jolly Black Giant and you got your Tex-Mex girlfriend and all your United-fucking-Colors-of-Benetton shit. You tell us.”

  I looked at Robert. “You’ve got to get a new spokesman.”

  “I mean it,” said Johnny with venom. “What the fuck do you think you know about it?” He pounded his fist on the table. “You haven’t been here. You haven’t sat at this fucking table.” He saw the chain. He picked it up and flung it at me. It snaked past me and crashed into the wall. “You don’t know anything.”

  His eyes were wild. He was panting. I could have shot him in the forehead. “Tell me then,” I said.

  He opened his mouth. Maybe to tell me about Judy Terrano. Maybe to tell me to fuck off. But from the other side of the house, heavy, slow footsteps came up the hall. Lucinda slipped silently to one side of the doorway, Terrence behind her. I slipped to the other side.

  William DuBuclet stepped into the doorway. He nodded hello and continued into the room, ignoring our guns. He wore a black overcoat and sunglasses. Robert, Jarik, and Johnny looked frightened to see him. He took off the overcoat and handed it to Jarik without looking at him. Then he smiled at Lucinda and tipped his head in a slight bow. “You must be Lucinda Juarez?”

  She pointed Johnny’s gun at him. “Yeah,” she said. “And you’re the one who forgot to teach your friends good manners?”

  “I’m afraid that early in life I learned to equate good manners with submission and, where I came from, submission led to exploitation. So yes, I’m guilty of neglecting to teach good manners. Perhaps times have changed and I’ve failed.” He looked around at the rest of us. “I don’t think times have changed so much, though.” He turned to Terrence. “I don’t believe I’ve met you.”

  Terrence had already tucked his pistol back into his waistband. He gazed hard at DuBuclet. “Terrence Messier, Mr. DuBuclet,” he said in a calm, respectful, but none-too-friendly voice, the voice of one big man speaking to another before he knows if he’s going to do battle with him.

  “I’m glad to meet you,” DuBuclet said with all the good manners that he said he rejected, but no submission. “And may I ask you what your interest is in this matter?”

  Terrence nodded at me. “I’m with him.”

  DuBuclet reached for his coat, and Jarik handed it to him. “Well, then,
I seem to have brought my old tired eyes up here for nothing. That is, if everything has been resolved.” He turned to me. “Has everything been resolved?”

  “Not everything,” I said. “Johnny was about to tell us more about Judy Terrano and the DuBuclet family secrets.”

  For the first time my words seemed to sting Johnny. DuBuclet turned and faced him. Johnny shrank from his gaze. I wondered what DuBuclet’s eyes were doing behind the sunglasses. “What were you going to tell us?” he asked.

  Johnny seemed to have lost his voice.

  “Come,” said DuBuclet.

  “I was going—”

  DuBuclet held out his hand and stilled him. “To tell him to fuck off?” He turned to me with a calm, gentle smile. “That’s generally his response when he’s asked something he’s either unprepared or ill-equipped to answer.”

  “Listen,” I said. “A nun and a priest are dead, Robert and Jarik snatched my partner from in front of my house, Johnny held a gun to Terrence’s back and threatened to shoot him—”

  Terrence interrupted. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I stopped and looked at him, questioning.

  “Come on,” he said, and he turned and walked into the hall. Something in his face made me think I should follow him.

  I glanced at Lucinda and she shrugged. DuBuclet watched me through his dark glasses. Robert, Jarik, and Johnny watched me. I shoved my gun into its holster and followed Terrence into the hall, Lucinda close behind me.

  Robert called after us from the kitchen, “Our guns?”

  I yelled back, “Pick them up at the District Thirteen police station.”

  We stepped outside. The sun-warmed breeze blew against my face. It felt like the caress of a sick old man. I turned on Terrence. “What was that about?”

  He looked away and said, “Shoot the fucker in the head if you want. Or I’ll shoot him for you,” he said. “But William DuBuclet is a great man. A great man. Kill him if you’ve got to, but don’t disrespect him.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  I TUCKED THE GUNS we’d taken from DuBuclet’s followers into my trunk, and we drove to Penang Malaysian Restaurant. A waiter brought roti canai and popiah to the table. Lucinda told us about her abduction from outside my house. She’d managed better than I had, punching Robert in the kidneys before Jarik smacked her face, but the result was the same—a trip in a Lexus SUV to places we didn’t want to go.

  “You get any idea what they’re up to?” Terrence asked.

  Lucinda thought about it. “They kept me in the room, door closed most of the time. The little I heard had to do with money. They had a couple of arguments about it and a couple of excited conversations. The rest was too quiet for me to hear.”

  Terrence shrugged that off. “Young guys are always going to want to make a buck.” He took a bite of the roti. For a big man, he ate delicately.

  “This wasn’t about a buck or two,” Lucinda said. “This was major money. Joe was right to ask Robert what they were expecting from Judy Terrano. They’re acting like something big is coming their way.”

  Terrence picked up a teacup, sipped from it. “Guys like them aren’t going to see big money, not in this lifetime.”

  The waiter brought more platters of food—mee goreng, Hainanese chicken, and Malaysian buddhist delight. The roti was crisp and brushed with melted butter. The mee goreng played sour flavors off sweet and bitter. But my mouth still held the musty taste of the air in the house where we’d found Lucinda.

  I reported what William DuBuclet had said about his dead son, Judy Terrano, and the Bad Kitty Lounge. I described Tony Jr., sitting in a wheelchair, clapping his hands like the world was putting on a show for him.

  “So DuBuclet, the killer, and Judy Terrano all tie back to the late sixties and the Bad Kitty,” Lucinda said.

  The past is right here between you and me, DuBuclet had said. “Yeah,” I agreed. “Old blood and new blood.”

  “Why isn’t the relationship between Judy Terrano and Anthony DuBuclet part of the public biography of the nun?” Lucinda asked. “Why doesn’t anyone else know about their son?”

  I shrugged. “I’m guessing Judy Terrano started a new life after the cops gunned down Anthony and she asked DuBuclet not to publicize the kid or the rest of it.”

  “And what did DuBuclet get in return?”

  Terrence swallowed a bite. “His grandson.”

  “Why would Judy Terrano give up her son?” Lucinda said.

  Terrence looked hard at her. “That’s naive, and you don’t look naive. Her child was the son of a man the cops shot like an animal. She was a black single mother, twenty years old. The kid had extra needs. DuBuclet had the money to take care of him.”

  Lucinda shook her head. “It’s not naive. I can’t imagine giving up a child, no matter what.”

  “You haven’t lived where I’ve lived,” he said.

  Lucinda raised both hands like she was surrendering to him and pushing him away at once. “Yeah, and you haven’t lived where I’ve lived. It doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

  Terrence’s voice remained calm, but I knew he’d won that voice only by fighting for years against his dead brother’s ghost. “It means everything.”

  “Umm,” I interrupted, “maybe we can find out more about DuBuclet’s son and Judy Terrano when they were hanging together at the Bad Kitty.”

  Terrence nodded and looked squarely at Lucinda. “Anyone in your neighborhood who can help us with that?”

  She closed her lips tight.

  “Fine,” he said. “We’ll go talk to some folks in mine.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  WE DROVE BACK DEEP into the South Side, staying mostly on side streets until we reached a place Terrence knew called The Shack. It occupied the first floor of a three-story brick building. The first floor was painted white, and the brick face had hand-painted signs advertising ICE COLD BEER, WINE & COLD DRINKS, SNACKS, POOL, and CHICAGO MUSIC NIGHTLY. It was a sad-looking place, burglar bars over the windows, more bars over the air-conditioning units to guard against hot neighbors on hot summer nights.

  We parked in a lot next to the building and Terrence led us inside. The barroom was warm and smelled like whiskey. Two men sat apart on stools at the bar. They had gray hair and tired skin. Their clothes hung loose on them. An old bartender stood opposite them, waiting for others to come in and soften their lives with whiskey. The sound system probably cost more than the four walls that surrounded it. It played a high complaining drawl that sang, “All my love in vain” over an acoustic guitar.

  The bartender’s face brightened when he saw Terrence. “Hey, Terrence, long time,” he said.

  “Hey, Dennis.” The men formed fists of their left hands and bounced them off each other’s. “How you been?”

  “Living, just living,” said the bartender.

  “Can’t ask for more.”

  The bartender peered around Terrence at Lucinda and me. “Who’re your friends?”

  “Friends is all,” he said. “Thomas around?”

  The man’s grin faded. “Okay, be that way. He’s upstairs.” He gestured toward a door at the other end of the room. The door had a sign that said STAFF ONLY.

  “How’s he doing?” Terrence asked.

  The bartender repeated, “He’s upstairs,” like that was an answer.

  We climbed two flights of stairs in a dusty stairwell. At the top, Terrence knocked on another door. When no one answered, he knocked again.

  “What?” said a cracked voice.

  “Terrence Messier,” Terrence answered.

  A long pause. “What the hell you want?”

  “Come for a visit,” Terrence said.

  The door opened. A man about my size, plus thirty years, stood in the doorway. He wore loose-fitting gray cotton pants, belted around his middle, and a faded flannel shirt. He held a baseball bat in one hand. His voice erupted, “Don’t ever come here unless I invite you.” He glared past Terrence. “And don’t ever tell your frie
nds about me. Don’t bring them around.” The bat looked like it had hit something sharp and metal. It was stained dark by age or blood or both. He held it like he was thinking of using it on Terrence’s head.

  Terrence brushed past him into the room. Now the man looked like he might use the bat on Lucinda and me. We stood where we were.

  “Well?” he croaked at us.

  “Well?” Lucinda answered.

  “Well, get the hell inside,” he said.

  We stepped through the doorway and the man closed the door behind us. Terrence turned. He had a big grin. The man laughed. He dropped the bat on the floor, and he and Terrence swallowed each other in a hug. “Thomas is the funniest man I know,” Terrence said.

  “Yeah, hilarious,” Lucinda mumbled.

  “Also the best singer.”

  “Once maybe,” the man said, wistful. “Once I could sing.”

  The man led us through a hall to a living room. There was an assortment of chairs and couches, a couple of end tables. Three guitars—two electric, one acoustic—rested on guitar stands. They gleamed like the man had spent the morning polishing them. A double window was open to the afternoon breeze, but heat, piping from the steam radiator, made the room hot. The apartment smelled like the whiskey from the bar two floors below. Even with the heat the place was comforting.

  Terrence introduced Lucinda and me as private detectives, leaving out our pasts as cops. He introduced the man to us as Thomas Stetler, owner-operator of The Shack and former front man for the most popular Chicago blues band never to cut an album. Stetler went to the kitchen and brought us glasses of iced tea.

  We talked about the connection between a dead nun and a family as old and tough as the dirt under the city. Stetler knew little about Judy Terrano and DuBuclet’s son but he grinned when I mentioned the Bad Kitty Lounge.

  “Me and the band played in that house a couple of times,” he said. “We played in some wild joints over the years, joints as far from the law as here to St. Louis. But we never played in another joint as wild as the Bad Kitty. You could do anything at all in that place, and excuse me for saying so”—he looked quickly at Lucinda—“when I say anything, I mean anything. You had to love a place like that, but you couldn’t live there. At least, I couldn’t. Some kids did, though. Black, white, Chinese, Mexican, they all was welcome. I think they had a Sioux Indian there for a while. The place was hot as a wire. I think I’ve got a picture of it around here somewhere.”