Smoke-Filled Rooms: A Smokey Dalton Novel
Page 28
“Hey!” Sinkovich said. “Them kids are a bunch of spoiled brats. They just wanted attention, playing for the cameras, and it got outta hand.”
“Really?”
“We don’t believe in playing. They gotta know what real life is like.”
“So they deserved it.”
“You betcha.”
Jimmy sidled up beside me, and took my hand.
“You ever been hit with a nightstick, Jack?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“I have.” I smiled thinly at him. “No one deserves to get hit with a nightstick.”
“Now what a minute,” he said. “I thought you and me, we was on the same side.”
I stared at him, at the scrapes on his knuckles, probably caused by birdshot inside his black gloves. Birdshot made punches particularly lethal. Using it was a trick favored by the Chicago police.
“Maybe we were on the same side for a moment, Jack,” I said, “but I don’t believe in beating people for exercising their constitutional rights.”
“Hey!”
I squeezed Jimmy’s hand and led him toward the building. Sinkovich continued to yell after me, but I ignored him. I had nothing more to say to him.
For the first time since I’d come to Chicago, the apartment building looked like home. The police tape was gone. I had a hunch Franklin was behind that, and I appreciated it.
When we stepped inside, Jimmy ran up the stairs and I followed, so tired that every muscle in my body ached. I heard a door open upstairs, and then Jimmy yell, “Franklin!” and laughter come out of the apartment.
I was smiling as I walked through the door.
The smile faded when I saw Truman Johnson sitting at the kitchen table. He was watching Jimmy, who was hugging Franklin and exclaiming happily about being home.
“Found what you were looking for, huh?” Johnson asked.
I froze. Franklin heard the tone and looked at us over Jimmy’s head.
“Hey,” Franklin said. “Let’s make sure your room’s okay.”
“I got stuff in the car. Laura, she—”
“Why don’t I help you get it?” Franklin said. “Then you can show it all to me.”
“Okay!” Jimmy bounded out as easily as he had run in. He had no idea how close we had come to losing it all last night and I hoped he would never find out.
I turned to Johnson. Maybe I could trust him. He knew how things were. He was black.
But he was also a cop.
“What do we owe this visit to?” I asked.
He was staring at the open door, as if he could still see Jimmy. “I went to the torture chamber, and I wanted to find out if you had any ideas. But I think you already figured out who killed Brian.”
I walked over to the fridge and pulled it open, looking for something to drink. “How do you get that?”
“You wouldn’t bring your boy back here if you hadn’t.”
“Really?” I grabbed a can of Coke.
“You said the events were connected.”
I closed the refrigerator door, and leaned on it. “No, you said that.”
He crossed his arms. “I thought you were going to help me solve Brian’s death.”
“I tried,” I said. “Looking for your lists got me fired.”
“I thought you were going to share what you knew.”
I pulled the ring top. The can hissed open. “I don’t know anything.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’ll bet that cigarette burn on the back of your neck just happened by accident then, huh?”
I sipped, hoping my hand wouldn’t shake. He knew. We both understood that. But I wasn’t going to tell him anything. I didn’t trust him enough.
After a moment, he sighed. “You leaving Chicago then?”
“No.”
“I could still take you in, ask you some questions.”
“You could,” I said. “It won’t help you, though, not on those old cases.”
“So you’ll admit this one was different.”
“No, Detective,” I said. “I won’t admit anything.”
He smiled. It was a cool, twisted smile. A smile of defeat. “Something else happens, I’m going to come to you.”
“For help, I trust.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, “for help.”
His gaze met mine. He nodded once, a gesture of respect, and then he left the apartment.
“What was all that?” Franklin stood in the doorway, his arms full of Jimmy’s new clothes. Laura had gone overboard with him, saying that shopping was one of the few things they were both able to enjoy together.
Jimmy came through the door, carrying a pile of games almost as tall as he was. He balanced them precariously as he made his way to his room.
I took the clothes from Franklin. “You can call Althea now.”
“I gathered as much.” He peered at me. “You don’t look too happy about this.”
“A lot of things changed in the last few hours, Franklin,” I said. “It’ll take some time to work through them.”
“Going back to Memphis?” he asked.
“Can’t. But I think it’s safe to stay in Chicago.”
“What did you do, Smokey?”
I met his gaze. There was no humor on his face at all. I’d never seen him look so serious.
“I did what I had to, Franklin,” I said. “I had no other choice.”
NINETEEN
SIX DAYS LATER, I sat on the metal stairway leading to the elevated train. Thousands of people filled the Loop, all of them silent. The scene was different from a few nights ago—except for the number of police. Their blue helmets were everywhere and a few tapped nightsticks against their hands, as if reminding us that any sign of trouble would not be tolerated.
We weren’t about to give trouble. The city was tired of it. The riots had ended, the Democrats had gone home. Humphrey was nominated, and everyone knew he couldn’t win. The convention had destroyed the Democratic party and the only one who didn’t know it was their nominee.
I felt like the city—superficially intact, but shattered somehow. On the surface, things were coming together. Laura had offered me and Jimmy one of her company’s houses. The house was huge—six bedrooms plus an attic and a basement. She made sure the rent was reasonable.
I turned her down, unable to accept her charity, and then I’d seen Jimmy’s face. Franklin’s apartment had gotten even more crowded with the addition of Malcolm, and after the last week, Jimmy and I needed some time to put our lives in order.
So I compromised. I asked Laura if Franklin could have the house. She agreed. I took Franklin’s apartment as a sublet, and Franklin took Malcolm. Suddenly Jimmy and I had all the space we needed.
I still had to contact Henry back in Memphis. It was time to sell my furniture, put my important belongings in storage and rent out my house. I needed income and that was one way to get it.
The other way was simple. I was already known in the neighborhood for being able to solve problems. I’d continue doing that, for a price. Just like I had in Memphis.
It all sounded so easy. Even my nightmares were gone, although Jimmy’s remained. For all his pretense, the experience in Laura’s apartment had left him shaky and bewildered.
It left me feeling as if I hadn’t known myself at all. Withers had said that he could remake anyone in his own image. I wondered if, through all of this, he had remade me.
The year of assassinations continued.
In the distance, I heard horns honk. The crowd stirred. The people in front of me stood. I had to stand too.
A motorcade rounded the corner, a series of black limousines with tiny American flags waving on the hoods. A battalion of Secret Service agents ran alongside the cars. Others rode inside.
The windows were down in the second car, and Richard Milhous Nixon, the Republican nominee for president of the United States rode by, waving, his mouth drawn in his famous Grinch-like grin.
A shiver ran down my back.
<
br /> This was what we had chosen for ourselves—with bullets, riots, and a war that was tearing the country apart, this man who had accused innocent people of being communists, who had chosen a vice-presidential candidate who used the word “nigger” in public, who used any stepping-stone he could find to climb toward the highest office in the land.
This was what assassination had brought us. This and a little boy who couldn’t sleep without dreaming of blood, a woman who still had a bruise on the side of her face, a child tortured to death for information he didn’t—he couldn’t—have.
A man buried in an unmarked grave.
I’d been wondering if Withers had a wife, children, parents who were still alive. If they would want to know what happened to him. Or had he become a shadow in all ways?
I would never know. But I couldn’t stop brooding about him. Thinking about how his eyes hadn’t really changed when that shot rang out. They had already been empty.
They had to have been, to murder Brian that way. To do all the things Withers had done.
He would probably have cheered this motorcade.
I did not. I could not, even though people around me were waving signs. I didn’t know what they saw in this man. He couldn’t promise anything except darkness, a continuation of the violence, a world where men like Thomas Withers flourished and boys continued to die.
I leaned against the metal railing, watched the motorcade disappear down the street, and wondered if the year of assassinations would ever really end.
ABOUT KRIS NELSCOTT
Kris Nelscott is an open pen name used by USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
The first Smokey Dalton novel, A Dangerous Road, won the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery and was short-listed for the Edgar Award for Best Novel; the second, Smoke-Filled Rooms, was a PNBA Book Award finalist; and the third, Thin Walls, was one of the Chicago Tribune’s best mysteries of the year. Kirkus chose Days of Rage as one of the top ten mysteries of the year and it was also nominated for a Shamus award for The Best Private Eye Hardcover Novel of the Year.
Entertainment Weekly says her equals are Walter Mosley and Raymond Chandler. Booklist calls the Smokey Dalton books “a high-class crime series” and Salon says “Kris Nelscott can lay claim to the strongest series of detective novels now being written by an American author.”
For more information about Kris Nelscott, or author Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s other works, please go to KrisNelscott.com or KristineKathrynRusch.com.
THE SMOKEY DALTON SERIES
in order:
Novels
A Dangerous Road
Smoke-Filled Rooms
Thin Walls
Stone Cribs
War At Home
Days of Rage
Street Justice (March 2014)
Short Stories
Guarding Lacey
Family Affair
Copyright Information
Smoke-Filled Rooms
Copyright © 2013 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2013 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © 2012 by Dphiman/Dreamstime
First published in 2001 by St. Martins Press
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Smokey Dalton Series
Dedication
Acknowledgments
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
About Kris Nelscott
The Smokey Dalton Series
Copyright Information