know. You’re wrong. I loved the man.”
“Shut up,” I said.
And I let the gun in my hand, under the sheet, poke prominently, obviously, up at him.
He frowned. “Is that...?”
“Maybe I’m just glad to see you,” I said.
“Michael...Don’t do anything foolish....”
I cocked my head, regarding him like a housewife checking a milk carton’s expiration date. “Mike may have known, or suspected you were dirty, your long friendship making him look the other way. Or maybe he just didn’t believe it was possible...or perhaps he was keeping you close, where you’re supposed to keep your enemies, particularly the ones pretending to be friends.”
His eyes and nostrils flared. “Michael, this is insane! I was best man at your wedding!”
“And about the only person in the world besides Mike Tree who knew we’d be staying at that shabby little motel, that first, and last, night of our honeymoon....”
“Is that your big evidence?”
The nine millimeter in my fist slipped out from under the sheet to point at him openly.
“No, just my favorite.” My hand was steady as it gripped the weapon. “Roger Freemont’s been gathering dirt all through the past year—despite your best efforts, he’s alive and well...and all of his work is in Lt. Valer’s hands, right now.”
Any defense, any pretense, fell from his features, like a flimsy garment slipping off a hanger. But there was nothing cold in that face—he seemed sad and troubled, but not defiant or angry.
He just said, “No...no bluff?”
“No bluff.”
Despite the gun, he edged closer, more intimate. “I do love you, Michael. I loved you before—”
I shoved the snout of the nine mil into the hollow of his throat and gave him my most horrible smile.
And I have a few.
“Some day,” I said, “I hope to get the smell of you off of me. It’ll take a hell of a bath, won’t it? Bloodbath, maybe.”
His lower lip quivered and his eyes were going all girly and moist.
“Do it,” he said, voice trembling. “Do it, then. Mike would.”
I backed the gun’s snout off, just a little. An inch maybe, so that it was no longer kissing his flesh.
“Kill you?” I said, and I smiled as if I still loved him. “After all we’ve meant to each other?...Why, I’m not going to kill you, Chic. I’m going to see you humiliated and disgraced. I’m going to watch you scramble and wheedle and deal, and then I’m going to watch you go to the pokey, anyway—where so many of your old friends are waiting to settle scores.”
Chic made a kind of half-dive for that chair so near the bed, where his .38 hung in its shoulder holster, and I helped him out, kicking his ass out of my bed and onto the floor where he lay in a naked pile and, when he finally looked up at me, I was looming over him in the black pajamas, pointing both guns down at him, mine and his.
“You are a bitch,” he spat.
“You made me yours,” I agreed. “Now you get to be somebody else’s....Stand up.”
He did. Stood there in all his well-tanned, dick-dangling glory, with his hands up and his chin down.
“Put your clothes on, Chic,” I said. “You never were one to stay the night.”
THIRTEEN
The light seeping around the drawn curtains in Dr. Cassel’s office was strictly the electric illumination of Chicago after dark. And only the green-shaded lamp, making a soft glow on the nearby desk, provided any light at all.
“What a week you’ve had,” the doctor said, his notebook in his lap. He checked his watch. “We’ve gone way over....”
I sat up. Swung around. Put my feet on the floor. “Sorry.”
He rose, smiling, tossing the notebook over on his desk. “I got caught up in it myself....No harm, no foul. You were my last patient, anyway.”
I got my purse from the floor near the recliner and went over to the coat rack and slipped my trenchcoat on.
“My receptionist is gone for the day,” the doctor said, “but I can write you in myself.”
“Fine,” I said, and went over and took the client chair opposite the psychiatrist, who was checking his appointment book—paper, not electronic. Very Old School, the doc.
“I have a cancellation on Wednesday,” he said. “I think we should start working on all of this new material as soon as possible.”
“I’ll be available.”
He wrote that down in the appointment book, shut it and slipped it away in a desk drawer. Then he looked across the desk at me, folding his hands prayerfully.
“Such a shock,” he said. His expression was grave. “A terrible blow. What this Captain Steele did to you, unimaginable. A trusted friend, a lover...betraying you so.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sucks.”
He studied me for a few moments, sighed, and shook his head somberly. “Ms. Tree, really, this...flippancy of yours. We’re going to have to really dig. You can’t simply shrug off such traumatic events.”
I shrugged. “Nature of my business, Doc, digging into traumatic events. Think of Marcy Addwatter and what I had to unearth there—of course, that’s a little bit different.”
“How so?”
I gestured with an open palm. “Someone used the traumatic events in her life to know just what buttons to push....”
“True,” he said, nodding, tenting his fingers now. “Actually, it’s surprising that this policeman, your Captain Steele, would have the sophistication to be your so-called Event Coordinator.”
“That’s ‘Planner,’ at least as Rafe’s dubbed it, and, well, you’re right. Would be surprising—only Chic Steele wasn’t the Event Planner.”
“But you said...?”
“Chic was responsible for a lot of what went down... only, you’re typically insightful in describing him as not being terribly sophisticated.” I shifted in the chair, which was unpadded. “Chic tapped a mobbed-up hitter to follow me, and try to take out Roger Freemont...not exactly a deft play. And when that flopped, he sent a recent street-gang grad to play nurse with a hypo full of mercy killing, minus the mercy. Not what you’d call subtle.”
“I see.” Dr. Cassel leaned back in his chair, rocking gently. “But perhaps this only reflects the hastiness of those two events, the lack of time available for proper planning.”
I sat forward and gave him a smile that was equal parts friendliness and respect. “Doc, could I ask you something? Something off the clock?”
He flipped a hand. “Certainly.”
“I came to you because my husband used to.”
“Correct.”
“I always wondered if that was really, exactly... ethical. I mean, can a husband and a wife go to the same shrink?”
Dr. Cassel mulled that a few moments, then said, “Generally, only when it’s for marital counseling... but with your husband deceased, well, that changes everything.”
“Doesn’t it though.” I cocked my head. “Why did Mike come to you in the first place?”
His smile became uneasy. “Now answering that would be
