The Bad Kitty Lounge

by Michael Wiley

  “My aunt and my cousins,” he said like there was power in the name Stone. I suppose there was.

  “I came here looking for Eric and David.”

  “They’re not here.”

  I shrugged. “I should’ve tried them at the Loop office.”

  “They’re not there either,” he said.

  “Then if you’ll hold your wolf, I’ll catch them at home.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll call the police. And then I’ll call my aunt.” He stepped toward the phone on the desk.

  But he stopped when a deep voice spoke from behind him. It said, “Sit.” Terrence filled the doorway, his Smith & Wesson in his hand, his gentle eyes on the dog. The dog had turned at the sound of him entering and it looked at him with its head cocked to the side.

  Then it sat.

  “Good girl,” he said and he stepped into the room. He pointed his gun at Mrs. Stone’s nephew. Lucinda followed him into the room. She pointed her gun at him, too.

  I got up from the desk. The dog growled, then looked at Terrence. Terrence turned his head a quarter to the left and eyed it. It stopped growling. “Sit,” Terrence said to the nephew. The man glared at him but he sat at the desk.

  Terrence asked me, “Did you get what you were looking for?”

  The financial statements might be important but I didn’t really know what I was looking for. “Sure,” I said.

  “Then why don’t you and Lucinda take off. I’ll sit here awhile with Mr. D cell.”

  “How will you get home?”

  “Look at me,” he said, and he opened his arms wide enough to hug a football team. “Do I look like I’m helpless?”

  He chose a chair, glanced around the room, and picked up the folders I’d left on the desk. We left him there reading, the German shepherd lying at his feet, Mrs. Stone’s nephew glaring at him silently from across the desk.

  Lucinda and I found our way out of the concrete cavern. We walked outside into the late afternoon sunlight. I looked up at the sky. The construction crane held a giant sheet of glass directly over our heads. The glass rose into the sky, swung toward the sun, and disappeared into the shadows of the building.

  THIRTY

  WE WOUND THROUGH THE afternoon traffic toward the western suburbs. An El train shot along on the tracks beside us, then slowed for a station as gently as a bird landing on water. The faces in the train windows and in the cars and trucks on the highway were dull, consumed by the day that had passed. I glanced at Lucinda. Her face had the same dull expression but I knew better. I also knew better about the people in the train, cars, and trucks. Some of them were thinking murder, whether or not they ever got around to picking up the kitchen knife. Others were racing toward tragedy, though they kept their speed just below sixty with a foot covering the brakes.

  As we neared the suburbs, the on-ramps flooded the highway with cars, and I cut around a pickup truck. I said, “There’s big money in the Stone Tower project. I saw the papers.”

  “No surprise.”

  “I suppose,” I said. “What did you find?”

  “Employee records. The Stones seem to have hired every one of their relatives to the tenth generation.”

  We put back on our dull faces.

  Then Lucinda said, “I’m glad we’re doing this.” She kept her eyes on the road but her voice got soft. “You know, working together.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

  “It feels good.” She glanced at me. “To be together.”

  Working with her felt to me like I was betraying Corrine, even if Corrine had walked out on me more than a year ago. “Yeah,” I said.

  “You know, whatever comes of it or doesn’t, this part is good,” she said.

  I nodded and we rode together in silence.

  David Stone’s daughter, Cassie, answered the door. She’d changed clothes. Her little black skirt looked designed to make you wonder if she was wearing anything underneath. Her T-shirt exposed a belly with a stud in it.

  “Don’t you ever get cold?” I said when the door opened.

  “You’re silly,” she said.

  “Is your father or uncle here?” I asked, then added, “Or your grandmother?”

  “Sure, Grandma’s here. You just missed Dad and Eric.” She turned and put a little wiggle into her black skirt.

  Lucinda raised her eyebrows at me and mouthed, “You’re silly.”

  We followed her inside. She led us through the front foyer past the pulsing fountain, across the living room, and to a paneled reading room. Mrs. Stone sat on a sofa with a lamp on either side, reading a magazine called Country Gardens. She had on a red wool dress and wore a strand of pearls. She had kicked off her shoes. She looked more like a rich lady enjoying her leisure years than the head of a family erecting thousands of tons of concrete, glass, and steel.

  As we entered the room, her granddaughter drifted over to an unlit fireplace, and Mrs. Stone peered at us over the top of her reading glasses. “Ah,” she said with a smile that was one part pleasure and three parts disdain. “Mr. Kozmarski again—and a lady friend.”

  Lucinda gave her the same. “Lucinda Juarez.”

  Mrs. Stone tipped her head toward her, then said to me, “And you’re not accompanied by bleeding killers this time?”

  “I dropped mine off at the police station. The only ones you’ll need to worry about live under your roof.”

  “I feel we’re quite safe then,” she said. “When you went to the police, were you able to avoid mentioning our name?”

  “I was,” I said, “but I don’t know why I bothered. I don’t know why Eric even asked me to. The cops are a step behind on this but they’ll catch up, and when they do they’ll look at you. They’ll look in your windows. They’ll look through your desk. They’ll have experts look at the hard drives on your computers. You’ll be dead center.” I hit hard and wildly to see how she would take a punch. I didn’t worry a lot about hitting her. She looked tough enough.

  She laid the magazine on her lap. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Stone Tower. It’s about to come tumbling down. Once the police look at you, the state attorney will freeze your assets and buyers will stop showing up in your office looking for three thousand square feet and a view. Then, if another corrupt family like yours doesn’t come and finish the building, the city will tear it down, and in twelve or eighteen months weeds and grass will take over and the lot will look like the prairie it was two hundred years ago. Personally, I think it’ll be property improvement.”

  She looked vaguely amused, not what I was hoping for. She turned to Lucinda. “Would you please ask Mr. Kozmarski to explain himself?”

  Lucinda smiled at her politely. “Tell us about the Bad Kitty Lounge.”

  Mrs. Stone looked stunned but only for a moment. She glanced at her granddaughter. “Would you pour me a Scotch and water and offer drinks to our guests?”

  Cassie narrowed her eyes at her, then gave us an ironic little curtsy and said, “May I offer you a drink?”

  “Water,” Lucinda said.

  A glass of bourbon with or without ice sounded right. “Water,” I said.

  She wiggled her black skirt out of the room.

  “Even in a family like mine, we shelter the young,” Mrs. Stone said.

  “The young at thirty-five?” I said.

  “You can add a few years to that, though she’d appreciate the compliment,” she said. “Some people remain forever young, especially if their families shelter them.”

  Lucinda said, “The Bad Kitty?”

  Mrs. Stone nodded. “Yes, the Bad Kitty. What do you wish to know?”

  I asked, “Did you own it when it burned?”

  “Yes.” Her voice trembled. “September 20, 1969. The saddest day of my life.”

  “Sadder for the four kids who died,” Lucinda said.

  Mrs. Stone looked at her sternly. “Hard for every mother who lost a child.”

  “W
hat child did you lose?” Lucinda sounded disgusted.

  “They arrested my son.”

  “Is he in jail?” I asked.

  She blinked her eyes and shook her head. “Oh, no. He’s been out for eleven years. It was David.”

  Now, I blinked. Lucinda didn’t. She said, “Then you really didn’t lose him, did you?”

  Mrs. Stone looked at her hard. “You don’t have children, do you?”

  Lucinda said nothing.

  “He was gone for twenty-seven years. Yes, I lost a son. Every day he was in jail, I lost him.”

  I asked, “How much was the Bad Kitty insured for?”

  She shook her head. “Not a penny.”

  “Come on,” Lucinda prodded.

  Mrs. Stone looked outraged. “The building was uninsured.”

  “Then why did David light the fire?” I asked.

  She spoke like she was weary from telling the story. “We argued in court that the fire was an accident and we’ve never changed our argument. Not once. Not when the prosecutor offered a plea bargain that would have released David in fifteen years. Not even when David knew that he could get life if he refused to bargain. The building had no gas hookup. We used kerosene for heat. David had installed a new tank on the day of the fire.”

  I shook my head. “Why did you heat the building if you weren’t renting apartments?”

  With the tight smile she said, “I don’t know where you’re getting your information. We’d rented one of the basement apartments and a studio on the second floor. For pennies, really, not enough to pay for the kerosene. But yes, the rest of the apartments were open.”

  She looked at me to see if I accepted her explanation. I didn’t know if I did, but I nodded.

  “In the trial,” she went on, “the prosecutor said David used the kerosene as an accelerant. Three of the kids who died were black—the boys and one of the girls. The other girl was white. It was a bad time to be black in Chicago and a bad time to be the white owner of property in a black neighborhood. Some of the black rights groups got the story and turned the accident into a white-on-black crime. But if—”

  “William DuBuclet’s group?”

  Again she looked surprised but recovered fast. “Yes, William DuBuclet’s group in particular. With him threatening violence, the prosecutor had little choice but to pursue my son.” She glanced at the doorway, seemingly impatient for her drink. “But if you’d known David, you would never—”

  “What’s your connection to Judy Terrano?” Lucinda asked in the politest of voices.

  Again Mrs. Stone wobbled. Again she glanced at the doorway. “You don’t know?”

  We gave her blank looks.

  “Before the fire, she and David were lovers.”

  I wobbled, too. “That’s not what I heard.”

  “What exactly have you heard?”

  “David, Eric, and your husband extorted sex from the girls who hung out at the Bad Kitty.”

  She laughed at me. “Who needed to extort it? The girls needed no persuasion.” She eyed us. “Excuse me if I’m overly comfortable with my husband’s infidelity and my sons’ sexual adventures, but that was a long time ago and my husband has been dead for fifteen years. I’ve had time to forgive. If my husband failed me at home, he at least built me a very nice house.”

  I nodded. “You’ve come a long way from heating buildings with kerosene. I also heard that Judy Terrano and Anthony DuBuclet were a couple. Did I mishear that, too?”

  She stopped smiling. “No no. After the fire, Judy took up with him. She was at the house with David on the night of the accident, and it devastated her, too. I think she also was lost that night. Everyone there was lost—and everything.”

  “Did she testify against your son at the trial?”

  She frowned, tight lipped. “Yes.”

  Lucinda spoke gently. “I imagine that her testimony angered David and the rest of your family.”

  Mrs. Stone kept her eyes away from ours. “It hurt David. As much as going to prison hurt him, that hurt him more. But it was a long time ago.”

  “Wounds like that are never old,” Lucinda said, as if she knew from experience.

  “No,” she said. “I suppose not.”

  I said to Mrs. Stone, “A wound like that might make somebody want to hurt someone.”

  That restored her. She looked at me coldly. “If you think David or anyone in this family would harm Judy, you don’t understand us at all. We’ve always thought of her as part of the family, and she always knew that we cared about her.”

  “Why would you?”

  “She’s been with us through good and bad. You don’t easily give up on someone like that.” Her eyes misted and I wondered how many tears she’d shed to get so tough.

  Cassie Stone returned with a tray and four drinks. She passed them around, and when she handed me mine she gave me what she probably considered a sleepy-eyed, sexy gaze. Then she wiggled her little black skirt and winked. It was a naughty wink from a naughty child.

  THIRTY-ONE

  WE DROVE BACK TOWARD the city in the first dark of the evening. The wind had picked up from the north. A sheet of newspaper blew across the entrance ramp to the Eisenhower Expressway. It told of someone dead or dying or getting rich or losing everything, someone at a moment that changed a life or a thousand lives or more. It disappeared under the tires of the Skylark.

  I said, “So David Stone burns down the Bad Kitty Lounge and forty years later Greg Samuelson burns Eric Stone’s Mercedes.”

  Lucinda looked at me for more.

  I had nothing more. “I’m just saying.”

  She asked, “So Samuelson was sending a message about the earlier fire when he torched the Mercedes?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he was just upset that Eric Stone was screwing his wife.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded.

  We rode silent in the thick traffic.

  Then Lucinda said, “The old lady’s involved.”

  “Mrs. Stone? I don’t think so. Definitely Eric and David, though.”

  Lucinda thought about that. “Judy Terrano testified against David Stone but could she have said more if she’d wanted to? Could she also have testified against his mom and dad? I mean, if the fire wasn’t an accident . . . if David’s mom and dad put him up to it.”

  “If and if,” I said. “Then why testify against David?”

  “She was mad at him? The police already had him cold? The police pressured—”

  “Why kill Judy Terrano now? Why shoot Greg Samuelson? Why are DuBuclet’s thugs running around with their guns drawn? What’s his interest?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Lucinda said. “But it all goes back to the Bad Kitty, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Lucinda shook her head, frustrated. “Why kill each other over a forty-year-old pile of ashes?”

  I glanced at her. For a moment, we locked eyes. “It’s no longer a pile of ashes,” I said. “It’s a luxury tower worth millions. Or it will be soon.”

  “Enough money to kill for,” Lucinda said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  We drove and thought some more. I didn’t get anywhere. I glanced at Lucinda and she shrugged.

  I flipped on the radio. It played the Rolling Stones’ “Midnight Rambler,” a middle-aged song that still sounded young. Then the news came on. A reporter said the police had Samuelson in custody but they had charged him only with misdemeanor arson. I figured that without gunpowder residue on his hands they were doubting his guilt. If they found no other evidence tying him to Judy Terrano’s body, they would need to set him free. The reporter didn’t say any of that. The DJ came back on and said that our afternoon of Indian summer was over. A cold front was blowing in. By the weekend we might see snow.

  Lucinda said, “You want to get dinner again?”

  It couldn’t happen. “I’ve got to get home to Jason.”

  “He’s invited.”

  “Corrine’s with him.”r />
  “Oh.”

  I didn’t know what to say to “Oh.”

  I dropped Lucinda at her house ten minutes later. As she got out, she looked at me long like she was unsure if something she once saw in my face was really there.

  “I’ll call in the morning,” I said.

  She gave me a tight-lipped smile and closed the car door.

  Before pulling from the curb, I turned on my cell phone. It told me I had missed two calls from my home number. Corrine. No messages. I called my house. The phone rang four times and the machine picked up. I listened to my voice asking me to leave a message, hung up, and dialed Corrine’s cell phone. She answered, “Yeah?”

  “Hey,” I said, trying soft. “I just tried you at my house. Where are you?”

  “That’s hilarious,” she said. “Where are you?”

  I said, “I’m sorry—I screwed up.”

  “That’s not enough, Joe. It never was, and it’s definitely not now.”

  “I know,” I said.

  We both let my admission hang. Then she said, “Where are you?”

  “Five, ten minutes from my house. Where are you?”

  “At your house. Where do you think I am?”

  “You didn’t answer my phone.”

  “That’s because it’s your phone. Yours, Joe, not mine. As in your nephew, not mine.”

  “Technically he’s a distant cousin—my mom’s sister’s daughter’s son.”

  She hung up on me.

  A couple of blocks from my house, a restaurant called Lannie’s sold rotisserie chickens and sides of potato latkes and oversteamed carrots and green beans. I called ahead for an order, then walked into my house with food that could warm bodies and minds in the coldest of countries. Corrine sat at my kitchen table with her coat on and her car keys in her hand. Jason’s bedroom door was closed with Jason behind it. I set the bags on the table, unfolded their tops, and looked at Corrine.

  “Sorry,” I said again.

  She didn’t return my look. She stood and started to the door.

  “Corrine—” I said.

  She turned halfway, slowly, unwilling to face me, impatient to go. “What?”

  I’d said her name not knowing what else I would say. I thought of saying thank you. I thought of making a crack about how good she looked from behind. But I said, “I love you.”