MARVELLA LEFT shortly afterward. She wanted to help with the dishes. I told her she had done enough. I almost offered to pay her, but felt it wrong in light of our conversation.
I would go to her apartment in the morning and see how much I owed her for the pizza. Or see if I could figure out another way to compensate her for her time.
It just felt wrong on this night.
Everything felt wrong on this night.
I pulled the rest of the pizza out of the oven and shut it off. Then I put the pizza, uncovered, into the refrigerator. I got a glass of tap water and walked into the living room.
The local news was on. WLS and its stupid happy talk format did not match my mood. I stalked the television set and grabbed the dial, clicking away from Bill Frink’s discussion of the upcoming Super Bowl. I went to NBC instead. I couldn’t quite bear to shut off the television, and I knew I could stomach The Tonight Show better than I could handle the inanity on the other channels.
If I only could survive the newscasts.
Part of me worried that Voss’s death would be on the local news and that I had already missed the coverage. Part of me knew that he wouldn’t be found for days, maybe weeks. By then, he’d be an afterthought, and no one would connect today’s incident with his killing.
I sank into the couch. WMAQ’s sportscaster Johnny Morris was going on and on about the Viking’s chances against the Chiefs on the weekend. Morris, who used to play for the Bears, acted as if he actually cared about this stuff. Maybe he did.
I closed my eyes, saw the flash of the gunshot, and opened them again. I swirled the water in my glass, and thought of the Scotch.
It wasn’t an answer, but it felt like one.
In order to live here, I had to close my eyes to so much. The Blackstone Rangers gang operated right near that school. I had threatened them last year, and they actually took me seriously. They considered me too dangerous to take on, which made Jimmy and the Grimshaw children off limits.
I had thought that was enough.
I hadn’t even looked at the Starlite. It hadn’t even crossed my mind.
We drove the kids to school, walked them into the building, protected them coming and going.
I never expected them to go off on their own, like Lacey had. Even though I should have. When Jimmy warned me
about her clothing, about her attitude, I thought it was inside the school itself, not in the schoolyard.
Not near that damn hotel.
How do you know it was instead of?
I had assumed. I was even assuming tonight. First, I figured that getting rid of Voss would solve most of the problem, figured he was operating alone or with a few friends out of the Starlite. Or maybe he had used the Starlite as an occasional base.
I’d been so furious, I hadn’t been able to control my hand. I had shot Voss before I had asked the right questions.
Us.
Dammit.
I stood up as the familiar Tonight Show theme music started. I paced around the living room.
I would have to work. I needed the money, especially now.
But I also needed to track this down. I had to balance it all.
And I had to figure out how to protect the kids better at school.
I understood Franklin’s reaction. I wanted to take those kids and wrap them in tissue, hide them in a closet somewhere, and remove them when they were grown.
We had set up an after-school program to keep them off the streets during the workday. I was tempted to ask the after-school program’s teacher, Mrs. Armitage, if she would work days as well, just teach the kids instead of sending them to school.
But there was the whole problem of accreditation, and money. It always came down to money.
And I knew, maybe better than most, if kids wanted to get into trouble, they could do it from a private program as easily as they could from a public one.
Besides, I didn’t know who else was threatened. That entire school was next to the Starlite. There were the gangs, and now this threat. Or there had always been this threat.
It had just become visible to me.
I would have to talk with the principal, let him know about the problem, see if something could be done. I also needed to figure out what I could do.
I wanted that hotel gone, its sleazy clientele in jail, off the streets, away from the children.
I was going to scout the entire neighborhood and see what else lurked there.
Which was something I should have done a long time ago.