“Kelly.”
I paused but didn’t look back.
“You okay?” she said.
“I’m okay.”
Her fingers slipped off the sleeve of my coat.
“Good. I’ll talk to you later.”
I heard her move away and continued walking. Phillip’s grave was at the very back of the cemetery, in a section neither the groundskeeper, nor anyone else, visited very often. I didn’t have any flowers to leave, not even a cigarette to lay on top of my brother’s headstone. He would have liked that.
Instead, I stood there and remembered. Flickering moments of childhood memory, ground into dust by the gears of fate and time. Phillip had been dead too long for me to really miss him. But I could still be angry, still wonder why. My brother and Nicole lived at the heart of what was once my youth. Now they’d be buried together. If nothing else, it was convenient.
After a minute or so had passed, I made the sign of the cross, ran my fingers along his name carved in the rock, and left. As I walked back to my car, I stole a glance through the trees. The backhoe was at work. Pouring dirt on my friend’s coffin, sending her on her way through eternity.
CHAPTER 41
I left the cemetery and drove to the Century City Mall at Diversey and Clark. I pulled into a no-parking zone, put on my flashers, and got out. It was midafternoon and the mall was pretty empty. There was a bass line playing inside my head, a hiss of static underneath, pulsing just below the skin. I pushed a button and waited for the elevator. Just as the doors opened, a guy and his girlfriend brushed past me and into the car. The guy was wearing a cut-off T-shirt and a Red Sox hat on backward. He punched a button and the doors began to close. I was still outside. The girl was laughing. The guy gave me a little finger-wave through the six inches of space left between the doors. I stuck my foot into the gap, reached through, and began to pry. I could hear the guy stabbing at the buttons, but it wasn’t working.
“You don’t like to wait.”
My voice felt low, dangerously in control.
“Whatever. We don’t have all fucking day.”
It was the girl. She was dressed in hipster jeans with a cut-off tank top. She was overweight and out of shape. I watched her belly fold over her jeans and palpitate as she screeched. Then I looked over to the guy. He was muscled up, a soft sort of weight-room muscle. The kind that looked good until you took it out for a little exercise. He was looking at me, wondering what I was going to do. He had a little sneer running across his upper lip. Not because he was tough. Not because he was capable. Simply because he didn’t know any better.
“Take your shot,” I said. The kid’s eyes jumped a bit.
“Excuse me, dude?”
“I said, Take your shot.”
I moved closer so he could understand that this was going to happen. The thrill of violence ran across my shoulders, fired down my arms, and coiled in my fists. Maybe he’d back down. I didn’t think so. At that moment, I sincerely hoped not.
“You want to go?” he said, and looked over at the girl, who was all eyes now.
I didn’t say anything, just waited. Like most guys who don’t know how to fight, he started out predictable and only got worse. A long slow right, looping in from the side, losing steam and then crashing into the side of my head. I moved just enough to take the punch, yet blunt its power. It only took an inch’s worth of movement. The trick was to know which inch and when.
I waited a beat. The kid looked at me, looked at his fist, and back to me again. Then it was over. A right hand caught him on the jaw and sent him back against the wall. He wanted to go down but I had him by the shirt. Not yet. I fired two more rights. Straight shots. Short and lethal. The first snapped his nose. The second closed his right eye. Then I let him go, and he slumped to the floor. It was over in less than five seconds. The girl was frozen in one corner of the elevator. Ready to run if I made a move her way. I got out, punched the button to close the doors, and took the stairs.
The movie theater was on the third floor. I bought a Coke, made my way in, and found a seat in the back. I could hear a bit of commotion outside. Sounded like security. Then it settled back down. I wasn’t sure what film I had bought a ticket for, but it didn’t matter. The knuckle above my ring finger was sore, so I finished the Coke and shoved my hand in the ice. Then I sat there for a while and stared at the screen. Tom Cruise was saying something to a Hollywood-looking girl, but I couldn’t really follow. It didn’t matter, either. In the darkness of the theater, I was safe. Just me, Tom, and a cupful of ice. Then my best friend, Nicole, came down the aisle and sat beside me. Wrapped an arm around my shoulders, touched my face, and told me how it was going to be okay. How I’d get along just fine. How I’d find someone else to trust, someone else to love, someone else to grow up with. How someday I’d forget it was my fault she was in the ground at the age of thirty-three.
I dropped the cup to the floor, bent forward, and ran my hands through my hair. Nicole. I thought about her in the darkness. In the theater. I didn’t want to think about Nicole. I couldn’t think about her. Ever again. That was over. This was beginning. That’s what I told myself. But it doesn’t work that way. At least not for me. So I let her in. Then I cried. Deep and quiet. In a way I hadn’t thought possible. I cried until I couldn’t anymore. The movie played on. I shook, I raged, I heaved. All barely above a whisper. And then there was no more. I waited, wondered. Whatever it was, however, was gone. I found a napkin on the floor of the theater and wiped my eyes. Tom was about to get blown up, shot, and kissed. All at the same time. I wished him well and left the theater.
The mall was quiet. No sign of the kid or his girl. I wanted to give him some money, offer to pay for medical expenses, something. Instead, I took the elevator down. It was empty, save for a spot of blood against the wall in one corner. I walked back down Diversey and found my car. No ticket. My lucky day. I got in and drove back to my apartment. Nicole was in the ground. Gone. And there was work to be done.
CHAPTER 42
Even a decade later, the street-mime killer was never far from a headline. The latest article I Googled on John William Grime was dated a week ago. A local businessman had bought some of his prison sketches and held a public bonfire. A week before that there was a piece in the Chicago Tribune about the house on Hutchinson. The split-level under which Grime had buried fifteen young women was being sold to a developer. A couple of dozen people dressed as mimes sat silently on the sidewalk as the house was bulldozed. Each held a picture of one of Grime’s victims. According to the reporter, plans called for a Kentucky Fried Chicken to replace the house. Everyone got a charge out of that, since Grime himself was once a KFC cook. That was only slightly before he murdered sixteen-year-old Tamara Kennedy, his first known victim.
I had fixed myself a cup of tea and was digging through the accounts of Grime’s arrest and trial when the phone rang. It was Diane.
“What are you doing?”
I checked my watch. It was twenty past six.
“Why aren’t you on the air?”
“I am. It’s a commercial break. Turn us on and I’ll lick my lips for you.”
“Funny. You coming over?”
“You want me there?”
“Yes.”
“How was your afternoon?”
“Fine.”
A pause.
