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  “I’m not sure I’m following everything you say,” Alma admitted. “It’s all a little foreign to me; I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Kiley said. “I’m talking mainly for my own benefit anyway; to get my thoughts organized.” It was true, in a way. What he was trying to do was crunch facts, then smooth them out and see if they made any sense. Brainstorm the case. He and Nick had done it together many times, and the two of them had done it with other cops on mutual cases. It was like participating in a cop think tank. But, Kiley realized, it wouldn’t work with Alma Lynn, even though she was an intelligent, educated woman. The woman he really needed across the booth from him was Gloria Mendez. That fine female cop mind of hers would have been perfect for Kiley right then.

  “May I ask you a question?” Alma’s voice, Kiley noticed for the first time, was turning a little throaty; he wondered if it was from stress or the gin. “This person Wally,” she wanted to know, “what will happen to him for what he did to my sister?”

  Kiley bit his lower lip slightly before answering that one. Alma had not been in the interrogation room when Wally gave his statement; she had only observed him during the brief, turbulent incident in the lobby when Wally panicked. And, as she herself had stated only a moment earlier, these things—events, people, crimes—were foreign to her.

  “I’ll explain it to you the best I can,” he said. “Only don’t expect all of it to make sense, or be fair, or turn out the way you’d like it to turn out. It’s a system, see, and systems don’t always work like they’re sup posed to—” Kiley leaned forward and drank some martini. “Understand, I don’t know that things will happen the way I’m going to tell you; it’s just my best prediction, okay? First, Wally will be booked, charged with homicide. There’ll be an arraignment at which he’s taken before a judge and the charge formally made, and he’ll be asked if he can afford an attorney, he’ll probably say no, so his case will be assigned to the public defender. Then there’ll be a preliminary hearing, kind of a mini-trial, at which an assistant state’s attorney will present evidence to convince a different judge that Wally should be held to answer the charge that was made at the arraignment. The public defender will make a lot of motions and objections, which in this case will probably be overruled, and the judge will find that there is reasonable cause to believe that Wally committed the crime—”

  Alma frowned deeply. “Reasonable cause? He confessed!”

  “There are times when a person’s confession can’t be used as evidence against them,” Kiley said. “For instance, if the arresting officers failed to advise Wally at once of his right to ask for a lawyer, or warn him about saying anything self-incriminating—”

  “Did they?” Alma wanted to know.

  “Probably not,” Kiley replied. He had not personally witnessed Wally being read his rights, but Dietrick and Meadows were both experienced cops, and Kiley was sure—

  Or was he sure? It had been a pretty hectic few minutes after Wally lost control. Sometimes in an earthquake, things fall into a crack.

  “Go on, please,” Alma said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Yeah. Well, anyway, the judge will probably hold Wally to answer the charge or charges against him—”

  “Charges?” Alma said. “Did that son of a bitch do anything to Ronnie before he killed her? Anything besides beat her, I mean?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Kiley told her. “Like I said, I haven’t seen the autopsy report—”

  “He didn’t do anything—sexual to her, did he?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “All right,” Alma said. “Go on.” Kiley was beginning to feel like he was on a witness stand.

  “The state’s attorney will have to try and decide what degree of homicide to try and prove against him—”

  “He’ll be charged with murder, won’t he?”

  “Not necessarily. He might be charged with voluntary or involuntary manslaughter—”

  “But it was murder,” the dead woman’s sister said in exasperation.

  “If it was,” Kiley pointed out, “it has to be decided whether it was murder in the first degree or murder in the second degree—”

  “My God. That animal beat my sister to death!”

  “But he may not have murdered her,” Kiley said, as patiently and calmly as he could. “See, for it to have been murder, it has to have been planned by Wally; it has to have been premeditated.” He sat back again. “I have to tell you, I don’t think that’s the case here. I think we’re looking at voluntary manslaughter here.”

  “Who’ll decide that?”

  “A jury, most likely. Could be the judge will do it, if both sides agree to a bench trial: a trial without a jury. Or maybe there won’t be a trial at all; maybe an agreement will be reached for Wally to plead guilty to a prespecified crime in exchange for a predetermined sentence—”

  “But,” Alma asked, “you don’t think there’s any chance of him being executed, or at least being sent to prison for life?”

  “None at all,” Kiley leveled with her. “Whoever decides Wally’s future, whether it’s a judge or a jury, is going to have to consider a lot of things in his favor—”

  “Such as?” Alma was close to being hostile now; an adversary.

  “Such as one or more psychiatric reports that will be made on him, which will probably show very low intelligence as well as inability to make rational decisions under pressure; such as a background history that may contain no criminal record or violence of any kind; such as testimony from the other dancers at the 4-Star Lounge about what a hell of a sweet guy poor, stupid Wally is; such as a lot of things I probably haven’t even thought of.” Kiley finished his second drink and with one finger dragged Alma’s untouched second martini over to his side of the table. “Like I said, it’s a system.”

  “Bottom line,” Alma said. “What’s the end result of this—system?” She used the word as if it were obscene.

  “Bottom line should be—” Kiley paused several beats, considering; then guessed, “ten years.”

  Alma Lynn stared at him in utter revulsion. “He beat my sister to death—broke every bone in her face—beat her breasts until they were completely flat, black and blue—and all he’ll have to serve is ten years in prison?”

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Kiley told her quietly. “If he’s smart, keeps out of trouble in the joint—in prison—and cooperates with the psychi atric people in the therapy program they set up for him, he’ll probably get out in about seven. Of course, he’ll be on supervised parole; they won’t just turn him loose on the public—”

  “What makes you so sure?” Alma Lynn challenged.

  “That’s not how the system works,” he answered, before realizing that it had been a sarcastic, disparaging question. Kiley then fell silent. There was nothing more he could say to this woman. She had finished her martini by now and Kiley had already drunk about half of her second one. But he pushed the glass back to her, saying, “You want to reconsider this? Or I can get you a fresh one—”

  “What’s left of this one is fine,” she said, picking up the glass and drinking the rest of it down. For a long moment she stared at the empty glass in her hand, her expression as devastated as any Kiley had ever seen, her eyes sad, unbelieving, hurt. She was almost as much a victim as her sister was. Finally, Alma brought herself to look at her watch. “I guess I’d better get on across the street,” she said listlessly. “Wouldn’t want to miss another bus home.”

  “I’ll carry your bag over,” Kiley said, starting to rise, but Alma quickly protested.

  “No, please, I’d rather you didn’t. I’d—just like to sit in the bus station by myself for a few minutes—”

  “You’re sure? I’ll be glad to—”

  “No, thank you anyway,” she insisted, rising, picking up her suitcase. Kiley stood and they clumsily shook hands. “You’ve been very kind, Detective Kiley. Very honest. You have my sincere appreciation.
Goodbye.”

  “Good-bye, Ms. Lynn.”

  Kiley watched Alma Lynn walk out the door. Then he sat back down and held his glass up for the bartender again.

  Eleven

  At his desk the next morning, Kiley had the Harold Winston bus sabotage file open in front of him, but he was actually looking at something else—the restricted records information Gloria had given him on the cars Nick had seen parked at the Shamrock—and trying to decide on his next move. He doubted he could get anywhere with the mob names on the list: They were men who had spent a lifetime covering their trails and avoiding cooperation with the police. If they even suspected they were going to be questioned about anything, let alone a cop killing, they would drop out of circulation at once. The only leads, Kiley decided, that he might get someplace with were the two non-mob names: the Disciples leader Fraz Lamont, and the leased car belonging to Prestige Auto Leasing. He did not want to try working Lamont yet; that would take some careful thought, planning. And the sketchy information he had obtained so far from Prestige—that the Mark VIII was driven by one of its officers—tentatively seemed to indicate that the auto leasing firm probably was a mob front of some kind. Kiley began to wonder if Tony Touhy and the others at the meeting might be involved in Prestige, and that it was just a legitimate business meeting of some kind—

  The phone rang and he picked it up. “Bomb-and-Arson, Kiley—”

  “Hi, Joe, it’s Stella.”

  “Hi. How are you doing?”

  “Oh, I’m hanging in, Joey, but it’s hard as hell, you know—” Her voice broke slightly. Then: “I was surprised when they gave me a new number for you at the station. What are you doing on the Bomb Squad?”

  “TAD,” Kiley told her. “They want me on the shelf for a while, until the situation settles down.”

  “Oh. Well, how do you like it?”

  “It’s all right,” he said, but without enthusiasm. “I’m working on a bus sabotage case; not exactly thrilling. How are the girls?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Stella admitted. “They’ve both really been in a funk: Jen is just kind of listless, moving from one thing to another without actually doing anything; and all Tessie wants to do is watch TV, mostly cartoons. Neither one of them wants to go back to school yet, and I haven’t made them. I don’t know if that’s smart or not—”

  “It won’t hurt them to miss a little school,” Kiley said.

  “I guess not.” Stella paused a beat, then asked, “Want to come over for dinner again? Maybe if the girls and I have some special company—you know, besides relatives all the time—we can work up some energy to get out of these doldrums.”

  “Shouldn’t you be getting as much rest as you can?” Kiley asked.

  “Hell, Joe, all I’ve been doing is resting,” she complained. “I think one of the things that’s wrong with all three of us is that we’re getting too much rest. We’re not doing anything. And it’s because we don’t have anything to look forward to like we did when Nick was coming home every day. He’d either be getting home late in the afternoon if you guys were working days, or getting up to eat breakfast with us if you were on nights. He was around, you know, and we all counted on seeing him. With just the three of us, there’s nothing to look forward to.”

  There was an unexpected silence between them. Kiley could not help thinking about Gino Bianco’s words, could not avoid the thought that in spite of the uncle’s request, he had been over to see Stella and the girls again just a few days earlier, could not elude the worry that his secret feelings for Stella Bianco might be surfacing, showing, exposing a hidden part of him for others to see. He was trying to weigh that against his desire to be with her.

  Presently Stella said, “Look, Joe, if you’re busy—” she let the words hang.

  “I’m not,” Kiley said. “I want to come over, Stel; I want to be with you—you and the girls; but I’ve been thinking how it might look and all—”

  “You sound like Uncle Gino,” Stella said. “He told me the same thing: that it might not look right if you came around too often.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him that I appreciated his concern and respected his advice, but that you were our closest family friend and that I did not intend to deprive either the girls or myself of your support and comfort. So he said he understood and would leave it to my best judgment, and he backed off.”

  I’ll bet, Kiley thought. The old dago son of a bitch never backed off from anything in his life. Neither Stella or himself had heard the last of Gino Bianco, Kiley was certain of that.

  “So,” Stella asked, “will you come?”

  “You know I will. When?”

  “Tomorrow night.” She sounded pleased. Over her shoulder Kiley heard her say loudly, “Girls! Uncle Joey’s coming for dinner tomorrow night.” Then to Joe, “Okay, make it about seven and we’ll eat at eight.”

  “It’s a date,” Kiley said, and was immediately sorry for his choice of words. Because that’s not what it was, he thought, a date; that’s what Gino Bianco would probably think it was; but that’s not actually what it was—

  “Okay,” Stella said. “See you tomorrow then. ’Bye.”

  As Kiley hung up, Aldena, the squad secretary, walked up to his desk and said, “You’re wanted up in IA; they just called. I hope you’re not in any trouble ’cause I don’t have time to be fooling with a lot of extra paperwork.”

  “Your concern is touching,” Kiley said. “If it’s anything I think will add to your work load, I’ll just submit an immediate resignation.”

  “I appreciate that,” Aldena said, and kept on walking, the barest hint of a smile on her lips.

  Truth be known, Kiley had to force the levity; the mere mention of IA had sent a spasm of nervousness through his stomach. What the hell was shaking now? he wondered. His first fear was that Gloria Mendez had somehow been made, and that he was being called in to rat her out. If that was the case, IA could go fuck itself.

  Closing the Winston file, Kiley put it in a drawer and followed Aldena toward the front of the squad room. He noticed on the way that Captain Madzak was not in his office, and wondered briefly if he was on the carpet for releasing Kiley to unsupervised fieldwork. The department was beginning to feel like the goddamned KGB.

  “Don’t forget to come back here and sign out if you decide to leave the building,” Aldena warned as he went through the door.

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  Upstairs, when Kiley entered IA, Vander and his deputy, Bill Somers, were just coming out of Vander’s office. “Come along with us, Detective,” said the IA commander.

  “Where to?” Kiley asked, following them back into the hall.

  “OCB.”

  “What’s up?” Kiley asked.

  Vander ignored the question, but Somers said, “You’ll find out when we get there.”

  You pompous little prick, Kiley thought. Somers was the one Vander had sent to Joe’s apartment to pick up the answering machine tape with Nick’s last message on it. Joe had sarcastically given Somers permission to search the place if he wanted to, and suspected the bastard had done just that—although, to give him credit, if he had, he’d done a good job of covering his work, because Kiley had found not a piece of paper, not a cup, not a sock out of place. Actually, Kiley’s main reasons for disliking Bill Somers were both general and specific. First, generally, Somers was IA, and all other cops loathed IA cops; second, specifically, Somers had a college degree, was younger than Kiley, had less time with the department, and was already a goddamned lieutenant.

  Kiley rode the elevator in silence with the two IA officers, then followed them down another hall and into OCB.

  “Go right in, Captain Vander,” the OCB secretary said with a smile. “Captain Lovat is waiting for you.”

  Gordon Lovat’s office was smaller and less richly decorated than Kiley had found Chief Cassidy’s to be, but it nevertheless was smartly, stylishly impressive, particularly considering t
he building it was in. Like the chief, Lovat had a glass case of trophies and plaques, and a wall of photographs. There were two men already in the office with Lovat when Vander, Somers, and Kiley entered. Seated before Lovat’s desk, they were not, Kiley thought, cops.

  “Come in, Allan, Bill,” said Lovat, rising. “Sit down, please. Kiley,” he shot a curt glance at Joe, “take a chair.” Sitting back down, the OCB commander said, “I’ll dispense with any unnecessary cordiality in this matter so we can get it over with as quickly as possible. These gentlemen,” indicating the two who were already in the office, “are Mr. Philip Touhy and his attorney, Mr. Edward R. Malcolm.” Both men were expensively but conservatively dressed. If they had not been introduced, it would have been hard to tell which was the lawyer. “Mr. Touhy came downtown and voluntarily gave us a statement regarding the finding of Detective Bianco’s body behind the Shamrock Club, a property which he owns. In the presence of Chief Cassidy, Deputy Chief Ward, Captain Fred Cleary of Homicide, four officers from Captain Cleary’s command, myself, and with his attorney present, Mr. Touhy submitted to questions regarding Detective Bianco’s killing.” Lovat picked up a sheaf of typewritten pages. “Mr. Touhy himself has an airtight alibi for the night of the killing, and has provided a similar alibi for his brother, Anthony Touhy, who is also represented by Mr. Malcolm. Anthony Touhy is unavailable to give his own statement due to being out of the country—”

  “Out of the country since when?” Kiley interrupted, almost indignantly. Gordon Lovat gave him a scathing glare.

  “Detective Kiley, I am conducting this meeting. You are ordered to remain silent unless asked a direct question.” The OCB commander’s eyes returned to Touhy’s statement. “Mr. Anthony Touhy, whom their attorney, Mr. Malcolm, believes was under suspicion both in Detective Bianco’s death and in an earlier homicide involving one Veronica Lynn, has made the following statements: He was acquainted with Ms. Lynn on an intimate social basis, did meet her in the alley behind the 4-Star Lounge on the night of her death, exchanged some personal photographs for a ring he had given her, and left her there, alive and unharmed, when he drove away.” Lovat’s eyes flicked to Kiley. “It is my understanding from Homicide that the Lynn case has been resolved, and that Mr. Anthony Touhy is no longer a suspect in that matter. With respect to Detective Bianco’s death, Mr. Anthony Touhy states the following: At about midnight on the night Detective Bianco was shot, Mr. Touhy left his apartment building at 3333 Lake Shore Drive and in his car, a 1993 Jaguar, proceeded to his brother’s place of business, the Shamrock Club, at 630 West Lawrence Avenue. He states that the club was closed when he arrived, it being a policy to close any time after eleven p.m. on weeknights unless there is sufficient business to warrant remaining open. Mr. Touhy states that he used his key to enter the premises in order to pick up his passport, which he kept in a personal file in the office there. He then drove to his brother Philip Touhy’s home in suburban Wolf Ridge, spent the night there, and was driven by his brother to O’Hare Airport the following morning, where he boarded Aer Lingus flight 36 to Shannon, Ireland. Homicide has confirmed that Mr. Touhy was a first-class passenger on that flight, and it has been verified by the Royal Ulster Constabulary that the subject is presently visiting relatives in the city of Belfast.” Lovat put down the typewritten pages and looked at the attorney, Edward Malcolm. “Do you have anything to add, counselor?”