Street Justice: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Nelscott, Kris

  “For a bright guy, you have a truly limited imagination,” she said. “A few of the women I know teach women how to shoot at a gun range outside of the city. And most of us know how to hit guys. We all know how to scream. They won’t expect a group of us, and we’ll have you.”

  “I thought you said I can’t be around the girls or they won’t leave,” I said. “Male, remember?”

  She smiled. “You can guard us. You can make sure we get the girls out. Then you can do whatever you were going to do.”

  Sometimes I disliked how clearly she saw me. She knew that rescuing the girls wasn’t my only priority.

  “I want to meet these women,” I said. “I am not committing to this until I know who they are and what they can do.”

  “You mean, unless you believe they can do what they say,” Marvella said, and she sounded disappointed in me.

  “That too,” I said.

  “Most of them aren’t going to want to meet you. They’re not fond of men.” Her gaze met mine.

  “Well,” I said, “they’re going to have to deal with me sooner or later. And I get to decide if they’re coming along.”

  Marvella’s lips thinned.

  “It’s my mission,” I said, and as I said it, I realized that “mission” was the right word. I felt like I was on a mission, a crusade even.

  “Yes, but you need help. Have you asked Jack?”

  It took me a minute to realize she meant Sinkovich. She was calling him Jack now? When had that happened?

  “I’m not going to,” I said. “He’s a cop.”

  “He won’t tell anyone,” she said.

  “That’s not my concern. He could lose his job over this.”

  She stared at me. “Shouldn’t that be his choice?”

  “Look, Marvella, this is not some kind of game. Eddie Turner has ties to the mob, and hotel makes more money each night than you or I see in years. We’re doing something—I’m going to do something—that could have major repercussions. I’m not asking Franklin or Jonathan to come with me. I’m not putting anyone in danger who can’t afford the danger. And that includes your friends and Jack Sinkovich.”

  “My friends as you call them already put themselves in danger, always to help other women. Usually they run clinics—” and by that Marvella meant abortion clinics, illegal clinics, which I already knew about because of an incident last year “—and sometimes they rescue women in bad circumstances, usually from an abusive spouse. This is a bad circumstance.”

  “Times one thousand,” I said. “This isn’t one abusive spouse. These are criminals.”

  “I know,” Marvella said. “That’s why you can’t go in alone.”

  I stood up and walked to that bay window. Lights from apartments across the alley flickered. People were having dinner, watching television, thinking about their jobs or their kids or whatever it was that normal people thought of at night.

  They weren’t talking about raiding a hotel filled with injured girls and prostitutes next to a school.

  I sighed. “Let me think about it.”

  “If you’re going to think,” Marvella said, “think about all of it. Consider what happens if you decide you’re not the one to take this on.”

  “Meaning what?” I could see part of her reflection in the glass. She appeared as streaks of brown and orange with an indefinable face.

  “Meaning that should be an option. Not doing this should absolutely be an option.”

  I nodded. It might have to be.

  “In the meantime, I’ll see who’s willing to help,” she said.

  “Don’t tell anyone where I’m going or what I’m planning.”

  “I’ll tell them in general terms.” She got up from the table. The brown and gold blur that the glass reflected moved up and into the kitchen.

  “I’m not taking in amateurs,” I said, realizing that with that sentence, Marvella would know that I wasn’t abandoning this mission.

  “Well, the professionals don’t seem willing to do anything,” she said. “It seems to me that amateurs are all you have left.”

  Almost all, I thought. I had one other idea. It was a long shot—these were all long shots—but it just might work.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “at four o’clock. Pick a location. I’ll meet with whoever shows up.”

  “Tomorrow?” Marvella asked. “You’re doing this tomorrow?”

  “I’m not waiting, Marvella.” I turned around. She was leaning on the counter, holding her coffee cup in both hands. “The situation on the ground could change in a heartbeat.”

  “All right then,” she said. “I’ll see what I can arrange. I’ll have a meeting location for you in the morning.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and headed toward the door.

  “One more thing, Bill,” she said. “You’ll need someone to watch Jimmy.”

  “You’re not going with me,” I said.

  “If my friends are going, I’m going,” she said. “Get someone for Jimmy.”

  I nodded, but didn’t promise anything. I hadn’t yet agreed to work with these women.

  I wasn’t sure I ever would.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  JIMMY WAS STILL UP, watching Petula Clark sing a duet with Dean Martin on The Dean Martin Show. It didn’t seem like the kind of show Jim would happily watch.

  I walked around the couch, expecting to find him sound asleep. Instead, he was still on his stomach, engrossed in whatever book he had been reading since dinner.

  I smiled. Jimmy had come a long way.

  I shut off the television.

  “Hey!” he said.

  “Hey yourself,” I said. “Did you finish everything?”

  “No, I still have this.” He waved the book at me. I still couldn’t see the title. “And I like the noise.”

  I also noticed that since he was preoccupied, his grammar was better. It made me wonder if he had been using bad grammar as much to annoy me instead of as an example of his ignorance.

  I decided not to point it out.

  He got up, book in hand, and turned the TV back on. Now, Martin was joking with Gale Gordon. Jimmy made a face, but didn’t change the channel. He went back to the couch and the book.

  First, I did the dishes, making enough noise to mostly drown out the inanity on the television. I hated hearing Marvella echo my thoughts on the difficulties of what I wanted to do.

  I also didn’t want to bring innocents into this. I had already ruled out Franklin and Jonathan without even telling them. I certainly wasn’t going to bring in “tough” women if I could help it.

  Although Marvella’s comment about the girls being unwilling to come with me resonated.

  The dishes took less time than I expected. I glanced over Jimmy’s shoulder, saw that he had about ten pages left, and went into my office. I grabbed a legal pad and brought it back to the kitchen table.

  While Jimmy and Dean Martin finished up, I diagrammed the interior of that hotel, as best I could remember it. Then I leaned back and stared at my drawing.

  That was a lot of real estate. More than I could cover alone. I needed to clear the place out and then check to make sure it was empty. Those one-way mirrors bothered me, and so did the boarded-up windows.

  I would have to be very careful.

  I realized that the television show had ended and late night news had started. I listened for a moment, heard nothing about a body, and felt some of the tension leave me.

  Then I stood and looked at the couch. Jimmy was sound asleep on top of the closed book.

  I went into his room, pulled down the covers on his bed, and turned on the night light. I left the door open, came out, and got him. I debated putting him in his pajamas, but that seemed redundant. I supposed smart—or at least attentive—parents would have had him change when they realized he was going to take longer than usual on his homework.

  He was making little snoring sounds. I crouched, and picked him up, careful not to wake him. He was getting heavy. There would
soon come a time when I wouldn’t be able to do this. But for the moment, he was still a kid. I cradled him close as I carried him to bed.

  I took off his shoes, and put his pajamas on the chair next to the bed. I covered him up, and pulled the door closed.

  That was the other problem I would have on this mission. If some of those girls were in as bad of shape as Lacey had been, they wouldn’t be able to walk out. They would need someone to carry them. A group of women couldn’t do that. And Marvella seemed to believe these girls would be afraid of men.

  I sighed.

  I went back to the kitchen, and froze as Floyd Kalber’s voice informed me that police had discovered a body on Chicago’s South Side. I glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was ten after ten, which meant that this was not a main story.

  I wasn’t sure if I should have been grateful or not.

  “Police identified the victim as Clyde Voss,” Kalber intoned. “He was found shot to death in his apartment….”

  I walked to the back of the couch so that I could see Kalber. His hair looked sprayed on and his suit, some kind of plaid, seemed to vibrate on the black-and-white screen. He stared through the television as if he could actually see me.

  “…Voss, a convicted drug dealer released last year on parole, was under a blanket, surrounded by drug paraphernalia. The building’s manager discovered the body while investigating a complaint about the victim’s blaring television. A police spokesman said that such noise was not uncommon in Voss’s apartment. The neighbors say it took two days to get up the nerve to complain. Voss had threatened many of them at gunpoint when they had complained before, so they were willing to put up with the sound.”

  I swallowed hard, my hand gripping the top of the couch.

  “Police have no leads, but neighbors believe Voss’s death was the result of a drug deal gone bad. In other news, police in Rogers Park…”

  I let out the breath I had been holding. No leads. A drug deal gone bad. No one had even tied Voss to the Starlite Hotel.

  I glanced at my front door almost involuntarily. If the police didn’t contact me in the next few days, they wouldn’t contact me at all. Police didn’t work hard on drug-related homicides, especially those that occurred on the South Side.

  But I couldn’t be complacent. I had to remain wary. Someone at the hospital might have heard Lacey talk; someone might have figured out that I went after Voss.

  I had to be prepared for questions, and I had to remain calm if anyone spoke to me.

  I shut off the television, trying to identify my mood. It took a moment.

  I was relieved, relieved that Voss’s body wasn’t waiting out there to be discovered at the exact right moment. Relieved the police had tied him to drugs, not the Starlite. Relieved that, at least according to this report, no one really cared about him.

  Someone probably had once. Just like an entire family cared about Donna Loring, even though she slipped deep into a life that Marvella said no one could escape from.

  Maybe that had happened with Voss as well.

  It didn’t matter to me. I had met the man he had become, not the boy he had been. And the man he had become had tried to destroy someone I loved.

  Just like the Starlite was doing every day.

  I returned to my diagram.

  It would take planning and a little bit of help, but I could get that hotel away from the school.

  And I could do it in one very long night.

  I just had to be as willing to destroy the Starlite as I had been to get rid of Voss.

  I had crossed lines there. I needed to cross lines again.

  I needed the right kind of help.

  And I knew just where to get it.

  THIRTY-SIX

  I TOOK THE KIDS to school the following morning. After I dropped them off, I circled the block, getting one last long look at the Starlite. It seemed quiet and almost harmless in the chilly sunlight. Through the cloudy windows of the Starlite café, I could see elderly couples somehow braving the filth for their morning breakfast.

  I saw very few cars in the alley, and those that I could see belonged to other houses. Only two cars in the street. The ice on the windshields told me the cars had been there all night, if not longer. And they were parked nearly a block away from the Starlite, so I had no idea if they were even connected to the hotel.

  I drove back home in contemplative silence. I felt calmer than I had the last few days. I had spent a few hours after I put Jim to bed examining and re-examining my plan. I saw a lot of flaws, but I had reduced the luck factor to almost nothing.

  I could get rid of that hotel, and do it quickly.

  Franklin was going to pick up the kids and take them to the after-school classes. We had touched base just briefly this morning, enough for me to realize his talk with Laura had gone well, at least in his opinion. He wouldn’t discuss Lacey, telling me I needed to talk with Althea. But on the way to school, Keith said that Lacey’s screams had awakened the household twice last night.

  “Daddy kills the monsters in my room,” Norene said quite seriously. “I dunno why he can’t kill them in hers.”

  That’s my job, I thought, but didn’t say. As I tried to think of some kind of comforting response, Mikie answered her. “Mom says it’s just from the hospital. She’ll get better. There’s no monsters to kill.”

  Jim looked at me in the rearview mirror, and I wouldn’t meet his gaze. I remained silent the whole way to the school, letting the kids talk.

  While I thought.

  And worried.

  Back at the apartment, I grabbed those flyers and pulled out the two professionally produced ones. It was still early, but I figured that was better.

  I sat on the couch and dialed the phone number at the bottom of Donna Loring’s flyer.

  “What the hell, man?” a sleepy voice said.

  “I have information on Donna Loring,” I said.

  “What?” A rustle, followed by a cough. I had woken the owner of the voice up and now he was forcing himself into full wakefulness.

  “This is the number, right?” I asked. “I found it on the bottom of a flyer.”

  “This is it, yeah, what do you know?”

  “There’s a lot,” I said. “I’d like to tell you in person.”

  “Tell me over the phone.”

  My stomach clenched. I was going to control this. “There’s a bakery about two blocks away from her junior high. I’ll be in there in twenty minutes, and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

  “I don’t need no damn coffee,” the voice said. “You talk to me now.”

  I hung up. Then I got up, grabbed my keys, parka, and wallet, and let myself out of the apartment.

  I had used the gangs to my own purposes before. It had been scary and uncomfortable. It had also been an extreme situation.

  Like this was.

  Before I left the driveway, I checked my gun to make sure it was loaded, and then I put it in my pocket. I needed a better system, if I was going to carry a gun around.

  Not that I wanted to, or even planned to.

  I drove back toward the school and the Starlite, stopping on a side street two blocks south. I left my hat and scarf in the van and walked the half block to the bakery.

  It was a cheerful place, but it had a wary feel. Daylight businesses worked best in gang territory, especially businesses that did most of their business in the morning.

  And this bakery looked like so many others across the city. Men in business suits stood in line as they waited for a middle-aged woman wearing a long dress coat handpick the three dozen donuts she was trying to purchase.

  The bakery smelled of fresh bread, cinnamon, and coffee. I joined the line, but didn’t have to wait very long. A young woman joined the man behind the counter, and she took care of the single orders.

  Theoretically, yesterday, I had had a donut that originated here, so today I ordered a cinnamon roll and a large coffee. I paid for a second coffee, and told the woman t
hat someone would be joining me a few minutes. I asked her if she minded bringing the coffee when he arrived.

  She smiled, and it made her seem both older and prettier at the same time. She didn’t mind.

  I left a good tip.

  I put my roll and coffee on the only remaining table near the wall. I sat with my back to that wall, facing both the door and the plate glass window, filled with this morning’s fresh pastries.

  Then I focused on the cinnamon roll.

  It was still warm and gooey, the frosting sweet and thick. I piled butter on top of it, and watched it melt. The bakery was warmer than I had expected. I hung my parka on the back of the chair, but made sure, with a single touch of the hand, that my gun was still easily accessible.

  A dozen people had entered and left in the time it took me to get my roll and my coffee. I tried not to look too anxious as I watched the door. I was worried that I would miss my contact.

  I shouldn’t have worried. I recognized him when he was half a block away.

  Four young men walked down the sidewalk, coming from the south. They wore different heavy coats, and black pants. Two wore ankle boots, which had to do them no good in this cold, and the red tams that were the group’s hallmark. The older two wore combat boots, and no tams.

  As they got close, the man behind the counter opened the cash register, grabbed some bills, and disappeared into the back, leaving the girl up front. The moment he did that, two customers left the line. The man waiting for his coffee looked over his shoulder. A woman, sitting opposite me in one of the other tables, stood, grabbed her purse and coat, and headed toward the door, only to stop as the four gang members gathered outside.

  A man near me swore. The young woman stood nervously behind the counter. The system for dealing with the Black P. Stone Nation should not have surprised me, but it did. It made me wonder how much this place paid for protection, not just to the Blackstone Rangers, but to the police as well.

  The woman slipped her coat on and tried to vanish as she waited, head down, for the four gang members to stop blocking the door.