Dropping Camille off back at her house is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
I’ve almost never turned down sex. And definitely not from somebody I actually liked. But I never really liked anyone before.
It scares me.
I know how sex can twist emotions. How it causes pain and conflict.
For the first time, I actually feel a connection to a woman. I’m terrified that I’m going to fuck it up by acting like I always do. Terrified that I’ll destroy this fragile thing between us, like I destroy everything else.
God, Camille looks stunning. She’s dressed up in this cute little outfit that I know she must have put on for me. The fact that she did something so outside the norm, when she’s usually so practical and stubborn . . . it pricks at me.
And on top of that, it really suits her. The blue looks beautiful against her skin. She’s got this wild mane of curls, her cheeks are flushed, and her lips are swollen, and her eyes look bigger and darker than ever with her pupils dilated like a cat’s.
She’s lolling back against my car door, exposing her smooth brown throat and the tops of those luscious breasts. Fucking hell, I wish I could have seen them in the light.
But it’s no good thinking about that now. My cock is still raging inside my jeans, painfully bent down my pant leg against my thigh, throbbing continually.
God, the taste of her pussy . . . I can still smell her scent on my fingers and face. It’s intoxicating. I want more.
No. Fucking no.
I’m taking her home, and I’m not taking advantage of her while she’s rolling.
Camille rests her hand on top of mine, where I’m holding the gear shift.
She looks at me with those liquid dark eyes. “I meant everything I said,” she tells me.
My chest feels tight. “Me too,” I say.
I can’t believe I told her about my mother. I’ve never told anybody that. No one knows it. Not my brothers or sister. Not even my father.
After my mother died, I lay there staring at her for almost an hour. Then, finally I touched her hand. It wasn’t sweaty anymore. It was cool and dry.
That seemed to break the spell. I rolled off the bed and ran out of the room. I ran up to the attic and hid there until Dante finally found me. He said Papa had to take our mother to the hospital. But I could see from the expression on his face that Dante already knew she was dead. They just didn’t know I’d seen it. That I watched it happen. And did nothing to help.
I never told anyone because I was so ashamed. I know I was a kid. But I was still a fucking coward.
I hated myself for that. Then hating me turned into hating everything and everyone.
But I don’t hate Camille.
I respected her when she was tough and wouldn’t give in to anyone.
And now I feel confused and almost humbled that after all this time when she finally opened up to somebody . . . it was me.
I don’t deserve it. I’m not kind. I’m not understanding.
But . . . I want to deserve it. I want to be a safe haven for her. Even if I don’t exactly know how to do that.
“I have to tell you something else,” Camille says.
“What is it?”
“There’s a cop who’s been hassling me. He’s making me sell Molly for Levi.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He caught my brother doing it, and to keep Vic out of trouble, I said I’d work for him as a CI.”
“Is his name Schultz?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “Logan Schultz.”
I can feel that anger rising up inside of me again. I have to hold my body stiff, so my hands don’t shake.
Camille can feel it anyway, with her hand resting over mine. She looks at me with a frightened expression.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I am angry, but not for the reason she thinks.
I’m furious that one more person is piling onto Camille, bending her and bending her far past the point where anyone else would break.
I don’t give a fuck that some ambitious cop wants to take a shot at me. But he has no business messing with Camille. The thought of him waiting outside her shop like he waited outside The Brass Anchor, with that stupid smirk on his face . . .
It makes me want to track him down and put a knife in his heart.
“Did you tell him anything?” I ask Camille.
“A few things about Levi,” she says.
That’s not good. If Levi finds out what Camille is doing, he’s violent and reckless enough to try to hurt her.
I’ll fucking kill him too, if he even thinks about it.
“I didn’t tell him anything about you!” Camille hastens to assure me.
“I don’t care about that,” I tell her. “I’m not scared of Schultz. I’ll put him in the ground if he threatens you.”
Camille blanches.
“I don’t want you to kill anyone for me,” she says. “I’m serious, Nero. I don’t want anyone to get hurt because of me.”
I look her in the eyes. “Then how can we be together?” I ask her. “I can change some things about myself. But not that.”
A shiver runs through her. I don’t know if it’s the idea of us being together, as a couple. Or if she’s disturbed by what she knows about me. That I’ll use violence when I have to, without hesitation.
We’ve reached Axel Auto. I pull up to the curb, turning off the engine.
“Do you want me to take you up to the door?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “I can make it. I’m back to normal now, I think.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I tell her.
She leans forward and kisses me softly on the lips.
“We’ll talk more tomorrow,” she says.
I watch Camille go inside her shop, but I don’t go home myself.
If Schultz is leaning on Camille, he’s a bigger problem than I thought. I need to look into him again, but from a different angle this time. I want to know about Matthew Schultz.
I spend the rest of the night driving around, visiting old friends. People forty and older, who lived in the South Shore neighborhood in 2005, when Schultz senior was an officer.
I want to know who shot him that night.
Nobody rolls up on an off-duty cop and puts a bullet in his head by accident. That was no car-jacking gone awry.
Not to mention, very few family men with a wife and kid at home are driving around at 1:30 am. Not by Rosenblum Park. I’m expecting to discover a mistress, a gambling habit, a corruption scheme. Schultz senior had an enemy—I want to know who it was.
I talk to Jeremy Porter, an old-timer who owns a bodega on the corner of 76th and Chappel, right by the park. He says he remembers the night the shooting happened, because he was running his shop, and he heard the gunshots and the sirens after. But he says he didn’t see anything.
“The news article said there was security footage,” I tell him. “Did that come from your shop?”
He shakes his head. “Nah. You couldn’t see a thing from here. I didn’t have cameras back then anyway.”
“Where do you think the footage came from?”
He shrugs. “Mighta been from the funeral home on Jeffrey. But that’s gone now.”
I check with the Chinese Kitchen sitting next to where the funeral home used to be. The owner doesn’t know anything about it, and he doesn’t want to talk to me.
“I don’t want trouble,” he tells me. “I’m closing up for the night. Don’t come back here.”
In the end, it’s August Bruce who gives me my lead. He owns a pub in South Shore, not close to the park, but still in the neighborhood.
He’s about sixty years old, with a bulldog jaw and Popeye arms. He offers me a drink on the house, even though I know he’s about the cheapest motherfucker alive. He likes Papa, so he’s trying to be hospitable.
I take the beer, ignoring the dusty bottle and the filthy rag Bruce is using to wipe down the bar.
“Yeah, I knew Schultz,” he says.
He lights a hand-rolled cigarette, ignoring the fact that he’s not supposed to be smoking inside his own pub. It smells like he does that a lot in here.
“How’d you know him?” I ask.
“His sister married my nephew. Plus, he grew up on the south side. Baseball star. Won all-state as a pitcher. Got drafted by South Bend, but never got called up. So everybody knew him in the neighborhood.”
“Then he became a cop.”
“That’s right,” Bruce chuckles. “People only know two kinds of careers here. Crime, or catching criminals. You choose a team, just like sandlot.”
“But he was a dirty cop.”
Bruce frowns, taking a puff off his cigarette, then picking a piece of tobacco off his tongue. “Who told you that?” he says.
“Somebody capped him. That doesn’t happen by accident. Plus, law of averages . . .”
Bruce shakes his head. “Schultz was as clean as they come. Actual hero-type.”
“You sure?”
“As much as you can know anybody.”
“Who shot him, then? Somebody he locked up? Somebody he was investigating?”
“Could be.” Bruce shrugs. “Or . . .”
I wait, letting him enjoy the suspense.
“You know who hates a hero cop?” Bruce says, squinting at me. “A dirty cop.”
“Is that based off fact, or just a guess?”
Bruce shrugs his heavy shoulders. “Couple of cops got there pretty quick. Funny they were running a traffic stop at 1:30 a.m. in South Shore. Never seen that in all the time I lived here.”
I think that over.
Then I stand up and clap Bruce on the shoulder.
“Thanks,” I say. “You raise some interesting questions.”
“Yeah, well be careful who else you raise those questions to,” Bruce says. “Nobody likes digging up old garbage.”
No, they don’t.
But I never really gave a fuck what people like.
