The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [18]
Of course, Kloska was holding back information, too. Reggie Vallentine didn’t need to know every clue in the Falcone case. Like the index card, folded and unfolded so many times that its edges were frayed and its face had become a map of soft creases. On it Dr. Falcone (or someone) had stacked four numbers in the shape of a pyramid:
2
1 9
3 2 9
7 8 8 3
It was the only item (except for cash, credit cards, and ID) in the wallet he found inside Marlena Falcone’s purse. By comparison, Kloska’s wallet was a repository of all kinds of useless scraps of paper—receipts and notes and insurance information and frequent-shopper cards. Why was this piece of scratch paper so special to the victim?
Kloska felt in his shirt for a pen and for the first time in several years he felt like his best arrest was ahead instead of behind him. That there was still a shithead out there who might never be caught if Bobby Kloska wasn’t on the case.
AS MUCH OF THE TRUTH
REGGIE LIFTED the mostly deadweight of his right arm onto the counter and took a long breath. There was nothing wrong with Bobby’s memory, or with his understanding of the Gold case. Despite the gentle mockery of his fellow detectives, Bobby was a devoted opera fan. He was always making jokes about “my boat,” but Kloska didn’t really own a boat. He spent his luxury money on a yearly subscription at the Lyric. Reggie knew because two years back he and Steph had borrowed the seats for La Bohème. Prior to Kloska’s arrest of Solomon Gold, the composer had been something like his hero, a young standard-bearer of classical music, a forward-looking music director who had brought the admiring attention of the classical world to Chicago.
Bobby Kloska was different from most cops Reggie knew. He pretended to be as cynical as the rest, but every case wounded him a little bit. Years ago at this very counter, Kloska had been talking about a little girl who’d been shot in her home in some random gang drive-by misfire and he muttered into his root beer, “This job’ll kill ya.” Reggie figured that in Bobby’s case it was literally true, that the compounding effect of all the shit he’d seen and couldn’t forget would finally choke him like a cancer.
The murder of Erica Liu had been a malignancy he couldn’t beat. Bobby Kloska had been betrayed by a man he had once admired, and now Bobby, who would never let this case go, wanted to see if Reggie could tell the same story he had told the night of Solomon’s murder, something that shouldn’t be difficult if he had always been telling the truth. Following the advice he always gave clients and witnesses, Reggie knew he hadn’t volunteered much and that he had kept his story simple.
He’d told as much of the truth of that night as he could, right up to the point where the truth became bad for him.
Reggie had parked his blue coupe in an easy forward and back motion just off Lincoln Park West and walked a block toward the lake and three blocks north to Gold’s home. To the east, the park was dark and silent except for exotic trilling from the direction of the zoo. Cars hummed up Lake Shore Drive ten miles over the summer speed limit. The air was light and cool in his lungs. He walked quickly, the rush of adrenaline and paranoia still lingering from his scare in the garage. The iron front gate was open an inch, and so was the heavy front door. “Hello!” Reggie called as he pushed inside. He heard a shouted reply from the second-floor office.
Up the crimson carpet of stairs.
In contrast to the rest of the home, which had been decorated by Solomon’s soon-to-be ex-wife with straight modern lines and large blocks of bright unbroken color, Gold’s office was like a Renaissance hallucination. Mad murals of Italian skylines covered three walls and the ceiling. The carpet was an enormous interbellum Persian. The desk was a massive slab of old European wood, carved on