What Doesn't Kill Us--A McKenzie Novel by David Housewright (most read books txt) 📗

he should let his friends have their moment; he could always come back in the morning. Only he was a cop, after all, and I was lying in a coma in the SICU at Regions Hospital and he wanted to know who shot me.

“McKenzie,” he said.

“McKenzie,” Deese repeated. “After I found out about all of this, I decided, you know what, screw it. I wasn’t going to say anything to anyone. T called and asked if I took the test and I’d say, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ I could tell, though, that it wasn’t all fun and games anymore. She was really bugged. She didn’t tell me what she was bugged about, but I knew. Of course, I knew. I knew because she had sent Dee Dee a message the same day that my DNA profile was posted. The website allows DNA relatives to contact each other on the website and T sent Dee Dee a message asking if she—T assumed Dee Dee was a woman. She sent Dee Dee a message asking if she was interested in learning more about the connection between them. Dee Dee replied saying”—Deese closed his eyes and bowed his head. He waited for a few beats before he opened them again—“‘Thank you. I have a family.’ I just couldn’t—I love my family, Bobby. If all of my uncles and aunts and cousins and my sister discovered that I’m not…”

“Of course you are,” Barbara said. “Whatever else, you’re your mother’s son.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Why is it complicated?”

“I inherited half of my father’s business.”

“The business where you’ve been working since you were sixteen; the business that you helped expand; the one that you’re running now?”

“Dad didn’t leave it to me and T, to David and Theresa. The will said he left equal shares to his children. The will was written a long time ago. I guess he thought he’d have more than just me and T.”

“So?” Barbara asked.

“Legally, there might be issues.”

“Have you asked anyone? A lawyer?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

The shrug he gave told Barbara the answer—he was afraid the answer would go against him.

“McKenzie,” Bobby said again.

“McKenzie, yeah,” Deese said. “I couldn’t make myself call an attorney, but I could call McKenzie.”

“Why?”

“After a while, a week, I don’t know—I just couldn’t shake this, all right? Not knowing who I really was…”

“You’re David Deese,” Barbara said.

“Not knowing who my real father was and why he was my real father…”

“James Deese was your real father,” Barbara said. “The man who raised you.”

“You say that, Barb, and it’s exactly what I want to hear. I wish my father and mother were available to tell me that. But…”

“But what?”

“I wanted to know the truth of my life. It’s like those superhero movies that they keep remaking, Spider-Man, Superman. I wanted to know my origin story.”

Deese paused again and in the silence Bobby understood.

“You said that you had seven matches,” he told Deese. “Theresa, a first cousin, and two second cousins make four.”

“There were three others,” Dees said. “One half sibling, a first cousin, and a second cousin on my birth father’s side. They all have French ancestry like me; no connection to T at all.”

“And…”

“And I wanted to find out about them. Find out who they were without them finding out who I was.”

“That’s when you called McKenzie,” Bobby said.

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“What does McKenzie always say when a friend asks him for a favor?”

“He says, ‘Sure.’”

Detective Jean Shipman was working her notes up for a Supplementary Investigation Report, in case one was needed, when the phone rang. It turned out that members of a motorcycle gang had assaulted a bouncer in a club on the East Side called Haven. It was called Haven because all members of all motorcycle gangs were welcome there as long as they didn’t wear their colors. The fight allegedly started—cops love the word “allegedly”—because members of one gang who were told they couldn’t wear their colors in the bar and be served claimed that they had seen members of a rival gang wearing their colors. Chaos ensued and Shipman thought, Finally, a real crime to investigate.

It was late when Bobby left Deese’s house and getting later, which is why he decided to go home instead of back to the hospital. He had left orders to be contacted if my condition changed and since he hadn’t heard anything…’Course, he wasn’t a relative and the staff at Regions Hospital didn’t work for him.

Bobby parked on the street in front of his house directly across from Merriam Park. The front porch light was on and the back porch light was on and the kitchen light was on. Bobby was big on keeping lights burning and insisted his wife and daughters strictly abide by his idiosyncrasy—and don’t get me started on his deep affection for locks. The rest of the house was dark, though, and he wondered briefly if Shelby had returned home or was still at the hospital; certainly his daughters were in bed. At least they had better be, he told himself. He stepped out of his car and made his way across the narrow boulevard to the sidewalk.

He saw them before he heard them. Two black men approaching; they were easily identifiable under the streetlamps. His hand went immediately to the Glock holstered at his waist even though one of the black men was in a wheelchair.

“Who are you?” Bobby asked.

Herzog and Chopper glanced at each other, knowing damn well that Bobby knew who they were—I had introduced them.

“You don’t remember us, Commander Dunston?” Chopper asked.

“I remember you, Mr. Coleman. Mr. Herzog.” Bobby’s hand continued to rest on the butt of the nine-millimeter. “What do you want?”

Chopper smiled.

“We can’t talk like old friends?” he said.

“Are we friends?”

“We have friends in common.”

“That’s not the same thing, is it?”

“Fuck, Chopper,” Herzog said. “What we doin’ here?”

“Good question,” Bobby said.

“McKenzie was shot tonight,” Chopper said.

“Me and my people are already on it,” Bobby told him.

“He’s our friend, too. We want to