The Good Kind of Bad (30 page)

‘You think I’ll tell because I went to help a dying man?’

‘A dying man who’d just thrown you out of a car! If you’ve had a crisis of conscience and shot your mouth off to anyone, I need to know, or I go to prison and you can kiss
your
life goodbye too. You know what they do to cops in prison? It ain’t pretty. I’ve been trying to forget him, and you should too. If we don’t? There’s a padded cell at the Lakeview with both our names on it. There must be some reason you’re still carrying such a torch for him. What did he say to you that night?’

‘When?’

‘Before he died, what did Joe say?’

‘Nothing, he said nothing,’ I lied.

‘Bullshit. He didn’t call you over to watch him splutter to death. Don’t lie to me, what did he say?’

‘He said . . . he said three words. He said those three words.’

‘What,
I love you
?’ Evan chuckled. ‘That’s why you’ve been so upset, because he said he loved you? He was a drunk, honey. He attacked you more than once. Please don’t say you’d have chosen him if it came down to it.’

‘Wait, if it came down to what?’

Evan glanced at his feet. ‘Nothing. I, I’m thinking aloud.’

‘No, you mean if it came down to you or him?
Deciding
between you or him? That’s why you killed him, to get rid of the competition?’

‘No! I’m with Brandi, aren’t I?’

‘Like that ever stopped a man before. Look, however you try and pretty it up, we covered up murder. You might be able to deal, to pretend, but I’m in way over my head. Doesn’t it feel wrong to you?’

‘
Feel
wrong? It is wrong! You think I’m not going through hell here myself? Forget if anyone finds him, if anyone saw us . . . For all my years on the force, shit, I never killed anybody. I keep having this nightmare, where I’m searching for the bullet in his chest, but there’s just more and more blood. It begins pouring from everywhere until I’m covered in it. Until it blinds me. If you think you’re in way over your head, then I’m drowning here, man.’

‘Nightmares aren’t real, Evan, the police investigating us
is
. I don’t know. I’m thinking of going away, until everything’s a little less . . . dangerous.’ I neglected to mention I wasn’t planning on coming back.

He smirked. ‘Oh, no. No way are you bailing on me. We’re in this shitty mess together, all right?’

‘But I stay and there’ll always be another detective snooping around. Eventually they’ll put two and two together. One day someone will discover what happened. Look, you should think about leaving too. What about the LAPD job? Staying here now
this
has happened? It’s a death sentence.’

Evan’s words had run dry. He didn’t see it, couldn’t comprehend how close this was to being blown wide open. Joe Petrozzi was now formally missing, the police actively investigating any foul play. Why would anyone sit around and wait for them to check the street cameras, the eye-witness reports, the, ‘
I did see a guy lugging something body-shaped down the stairs. Come to mention it, I haven’t seen Joe in a while.
’ I hadn’t heard any rumours in Armanti, there was nothing on the news, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t another investigation, other than Zupansky’s, currently on going.

‘How can you talk about leaving, especially after today? Now Zupansky’s got this gig he’ll run with it, look for any angle he can. Trust me, his reputation precedes him. You or me taking off is the only excuse he’ll need. We have to stay a little longer, until people forget. You try to get the hell out of Dodge now and you might as well stand in the middle of Michigan Avenue and announce to the world you’re guilty.’

An army of people pounded the streets of Chicago, swinging their purchases like well-aimed battering rams.

Following my Zupansky (and Evan) interrogation of four days ago, even the simplest tasks had become a chore. The dawn came too soon in the city where my husband’s life ended. I felt clumsy, burdened with a secret I didn’t want, a secret swallowing me whole. Whatever had been said, whatever I’d believed, with each step Joe still danced in my shadow.

Saturday was hardly a day to trawl the stores of the Magnificent Mile. Under my breath I cursed the pushy assistant at Miu Miu, my feet blistering in the ill-fitting heels. Pausing by the Mulberry store window on East Oak Street, I debated which bag would best fit my summer ensembles. Once again, I was all about the distractions.

‘The Lily every time,’ Nina announced, with an arm around my shoulder.

I smiled, returning the gesture. ‘What are you doing here? You better not be stalking me, Nina.’

‘Stalker?
Moi
? It
is
the weekend. What else is there to do but max out Mickey’s MasterCard? Come on,’ she ordered, pulling on my arm, ‘let’s grab lunch. I have a real craving for pickles today.’

Our go-to place, Jodi’s Coffee Shop on East Delaware, was cosy and inviting ‒ vintage chic with a contemporary twist. At our table by the counter, Nina vigorously stirred her latte, ignited by a deceptive smile. Her symmetrical, gazelle-like features had taken on a different hue, lighter than her usual tone, like someone had drained the blood from under her skin.

‘We’re caught in a trap, I can’t walk out . . .’ The waiter with a shaggy mop of hair approached, singing along with the fake retro radio. ‘I love Elvis, don’t you love Elvis?’ he said, arriving at our table after a subtle slide across the floor.

‘He’s okay,’ Nina replied.

‘Okay? He’s more than okay. Elvis is The King. I’ve got tattoos of him everywhere. Want to see?’

He lifted his trouser leg to reveal a large tattoo of Elvis’s head on his lower calf. Nina arched an eyebrow, a half smile curling her mouth as she played with her ponytail.

‘There’re song lyrics on the other leg, in case you were wondering.’

‘There anywhere you don’t have tattoos, honey?’ Nina asked.

Like he wasn’t waiting for that one.

‘There is
one
place, though I’m not sure I can stand the pain, even for Elvis himself.’

‘Interesting,’ Nina replied, and we both giggled in unison.

He turned away, surely disappointed he hadn’t received Nina’s number. Undeterred, he swaggered away to the next table, populated by three shimmering brunettes.

‘We’re caught in a trap, I can’t walk out . . .’

‘He had Elvis’s head on his leg,’ Nina announced.

‘I know. I was right here.’

‘Who has another person’s face on their calf? Guys always make themselves weird, and it was going so well.’

‘And what about Mickey? You weren’t going to give him your number, were you?’

‘No way. He wasn’t even cute.’

‘Plus he works in a coffee shop.’

‘And Joe drove one of those little brown trucks. Don’t get all high and mighty now you’ve crawled back out of the gutter.’ She let out a sigh. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.’

‘Then what’s with biting my head off?’

Nina paused, flicked her ponytail, scanned the room then returned her eyes, staring me out for a good half-minute.

‘Nina . . . stop being freaky.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, stop staring like that. Now I don’t want to know.’

‘Oh, you’re going to know. The whole world will know what he’s been doing.’

I decided it was best to indulge her. Away from the confines of Faith, it wasn’t like she was falling over herself to ask how I felt about the whole Joe thing. I’d told her about Zupansky, about the real chance I might be thrown in jail, but she’d seemed more disappointed it wasn’t Anton who’d been waiting downstairs. ‘All right, tell me what Mickey’s been doing.’

Dipping her head in true melodramatic Nina fashion, she began. ‘Those bloody shirts of his? He just dumps them in the laundry now. There’s no hiding. And it’s not a few spots, they’re saturated with the stuff, wet to the touch or stiff as a board. I nearly puked watching him pick blood from under his fingernails, but it wasn’t his own. Only his fists were cut, like he’d been punching a brick wall.’

Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. ‘He beat some guy up? He beat some guy . . .’

‘Why would anyone punch a wall? And now he doesn’t care I wash his blood-soaked clothes. He wants me to find out. He’s not even hiding it.’

Nina’s stare could’ve turned her coffee to ice. There was a crash behind us as the breeze blew open the door, my hands beginning to freeze.

‘He’s becoming more like
him
every day,’ Nina murmured, again glancing around, probably searching for a guy with eyeholes cut into his newspaper.

‘More like who?’

‘The one who beat the thug into him; Victor, of course.’

Victor. How easily I’d forgotten the comic book villain from Nina’s other life, the aged wise-guy cop with the Mexican bodyguard. Nina’s tales of dishonest cops and killers for hire had excited me once, but that was before I’d lived out my own story of murder and betrayal. Now I remembered Victor, the cloaked figure from the darkness. It looked like he was back, and now more volatile than ever.

‘Have you seen him? Has he been staking out your apartment again?’

‘Mickey promised me things would get better, and they’re still as shitty. I guess once you look past the façade, once you step too far into another person’s life, you start to wish you hadn’t. Love blinds you, lets you see what you want. There’s no room for the
truth
.’

She was a contradiction in terms, the beautiful, elegant ex-model incessantly tapping the teaspoon on the table top. Mickey was Nina’s ‘Joe’, a healthy dose of poison that’d begun to threaten her mere existence.

I reached for Nina’s arm but she drew her hand away.

‘We need to talk this through, help you decide what to do about Mickey.’

‘You know another thing?’ she replied, blatantly ignoring me. ‘That guy’s been following me.’

I realised she was nodding at a man in his early thirties, sporting a mess of hair identical to Joe’s. A wiry frame sat within a tan trench coat, and a chin of dark stubble hid an unconventionally handsome face. He sat alone at the window table with a coffee in his hand and his attention entirely on the newspaper.

‘What are you talking about? There’s no one following you.’

‘Yes they are. I’ve seen that guy before, I remember Mickey talking to him. He must be another cop. Don’t you see? He’s got guys trailing me. He’s sent his dirty friends to track me.’

If Mickey wasn’t keeping his corrupt business to himself, of course he’d ensure her mouth stayed shut.

‘You think because Mickey asked you to wash his shirts this guy’s been following you?’

‘We’ve got to get out of here. He could have a gun under that coat.’

Back out on the street, I stuttered behind Nina in my heels as she marched ahead like a sergeant major.

Nina reached back and pulled on my arm before turning up her jacket collar. ‘Is he following us? Come on. Keep up, girl.’

Scanning North State behind us, I almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. Refusing to take a step further, I soon brought her to a halt. ‘Nina, stop a second. This is stupid. There’s no one there. See? You’re being paranoid.’

‘
You
might be safe now and all, but I’m not. That guy in Jodi’s felt wrong. Really wrong. I think . . . I think Mickey’s going to kill me.’

‘What?’

‘He’ll either do it himself or pay some dirt bag to do it for him.’

‘And you could live until you’re ninety. Nina, stop it. If you weren’t scaring me before, you are now.’

‘You don’t know him. You don’t know what he said.’

‘You should go home. Get some rest,’ I advised.

‘You’re beginning to sound like Mickey.’ She managed a half smile before turning to go. ‘Maybe I am being paranoid, but I just hope you’re right ‒ for your sake, and mine.’

I’d been summoned to Evan’s later that day, Brandi apparently MIA. We needed to talk some more about ‘the whole Zupansky thing’, he’d said on the phone, currently my least favourite topic of conversation.

I’d refused the apartment on Redemption Square. I’d refused them all. I didn’t see the point now I was leaving. Chicago, the secret, the sneaking around, that I’d watched Joe take a bullet to the chest . . . I couldn’t hack it, and all the while praying the police would stay dumb. Of course they would, especially now they had an officer looking after Joe’s file, an officer with a reputation that preceded him.

Once the Zupansky episode was over, so was Chicago, not that I was reminding Evan.

In the West Superior apartment kitchen, we ate dinner in silence. Either Evan had learned to cook or K2 were doing takeaway now. The cutlery scraped the fine bone china as the crystal glasses clinked our teeth. Each time Evan glanced up I was staring at my plate, and when I tried to meet his gaze his eyes were on the window, certainly thinking of other,
hidden
things.