by Thomas Laird
But I don’t want it to be laughable. I want to believe in a Supreme Being Who cares what happens to us. It’s just that most of the hard evidence points the other way. I can’t come to terms with the fact that there is far more evil in our lives than good, at least when it comes to daily living. Maybe it is that good travels unannounced; I don’t know. But it would seem the Fallen Angel is in command of much more real estate on earth than the Big Boss Himself is.
Act as if ye had faith, we’re told. So I go back to Mass. I try to make the morning Mass at least three or four times a week, including Sundays. I say the rosary—a decade—and I pray for my first wife and for my father Jake and for all my living family. I think if I keep uttering those prayers to Mary, something will happen. I’ll have a vision. Or God Himself will finally whisper in my ear that He’s present and has always been hanging right by my elbow.
I never have the epiphany. I never see the weeping Virgin in a pool of water or on the side of a wall. I never hear any voice but my own in my conscience. God is silent—or I’m deaf. One or the other.
This Anderson case has brought out my lack of faith in even greater highlights. It makes me feel incomplete; it makes me feel as if I’ve failed at something very important. I feel like I’ve missed something that other people have experienced, and I’m left on the shore waving goodbye, and their ship has already left port.
I don’t really know how to describe it. I’m looking for faith while I’m pursuing mass murderers, the killers of over a thousand men and women. I wonder if when that explosion came they all saw that bright light we keep hearing about. Was there a tunnel with a Christ-like figure beckoning?
Or was it the buzzing of a common house fly, the way Emily Dickinson wrote it?
*
It’s been a while since we faced Wade S. Hansen. We make the courtesy call to him in the third week in May. There is optimism for the Cubs this year, so you can see how early in the season it still is.
He doesn’t lawyer up. His attorney is there with him in his office.
“Anything my client doesn’t want to answer—“
“I know the drill, Counselor,” I tell Johnny Adams. I’ve been cross- examined by him in court often enough. I respect him as a lawyer, but I despise his choice of client at the moment.
“Okay, Jimmy. Fire away,” the blond, middle fifties, slightly portly attorney tells me and Tommy.
I stare into the eyes of Wade Hansen. He’s that Gentlemen’s Quarterly, outrageously handsome male. He’d be a prime cover boy.
“Off the record—“
“There’s nothing off the record, Jimmy,” Adams smiles.
“Off the record, we know you and Grodnov are responsible for more than one thousand homicides at the Anderson Building.”
“Christ. Please!” Wade tries to scoff at the notion.
“No no. We know you had him blow up the place to kill Greta because she had an affair with one of your business associates. We don’t know who that was, yet, but we’ll find out. And now that the FBI has become allies with the Chicago Police—at least temporarily, while all this fine patriotism persists—we have been gaining on you two, Hansen.
“We know the Russians don’t like to become witnesses against each other, but we’re going to find out if they like to squeal on nice anglo partners like you. And the Sicilians in town are cooperating against the Russians, so all kinds of brand new avenues are opening up for us.”
“Your only flaw, Parisi, is that I had nothing to do with Greta’s death, and I deeply resent—“
“Whew! And I thought I was going to go through all this with you without hearing one fucking lie this morning. Thanks. I mean really. What a relief.”
“Is there anything else you came here to say, Jimmy?” Johnny Adams says.
“Johnny…Johnny Johnny Johnny…At your age and with all the money you’ve shystered. Do you really need to defend scum like him?”
“Parisi, get the hell out of—“
I stand up. Then I look back at Tommy who is grinning as if he’s been dragged into the dean’s office for being caught smoking in the john.
“Here’s your one-time offer. You give me Grodnov. You hand him to us as the mastermind of the Anderson thing and we’ll get the Feds to give you immunity. A new identity, a new life. Of course you’ll forfeit your kingdom here, but you’ll nail Grodnov before he turns on you. We’re close to slapping the shackles on him, Wade. I shit you not. Now it’s a matter of how smart you are and how quickly you act.
“After all that money and all that pussy…You’re still a young man. Can you imagine what a cage in a federal prison’ll feel like? You could live another thirty or forty years—half your life, Wade. So you have some thinking to do. And I know the first thing you and Johnny will consider is whether or not I’m bluffing.
“Am I bluffing, Tommy?”
“Nope,” Tommy grins. It’s the same shit-eaten grin as before.
“This gets tiresome. It passed ludicrous some time ago,” Wade smiles. “Now get out of my office. And unless you have charges to press, don’t ever come onto my property again, Parisi.”
“It’s Lieutenant Parisi, by the way. You need to learn respect, Wade. Respect is something you can’t buy. Maybe you missed that, somewhere along the line…You have twelve hours to accept the offer. Take it easy, Johnny. Try to clean up your client list, huh?”
I wave goodbye to Wade S. Hansen. He remains calm. He sits still, like a snake that’s about to spring. But I don’t wait around for him to leap at me.
*
“You expect him to bite at the offer?” Tommy says. We’re sitting at Dunkin Doughnuts—Spencer’s idea, not mine. But I buy a doughnut and a Diet Coke in spite of my better judgment.
“No. Of course not. He’s too smart. He knows it’s all smoke. I just want him to feel loved, that’s all.”
I take a bite into my chocolate, strawberry-jelly-filled doughnut.
“How to become a fat fuck overnight,” I tell my partner.
“Like White Castle is health food,” he replies.
“Point taken.”
“God damn, these are sinful,” I smile.
“Okay. No more. I promise.”
“It’s all right. Let’s just not get into the habit. Garvin is our one weakness. We don’t need another…He won’t accept our offer, no. Hell, he’s too powerful. He’s got all that cash. He’d try to bolt out of the country before he’d go witness protection. I just want him to feel our breath on his neck. I want him to start worrying about Grodnov’s loyalty to a non-brother of the Russian Mafiosi. Grodnov will be the one to take the hook, of the two of them. Let’s just keep them wary of each other.
“And we need to find out who the associate was who did the dirty boogie with Greta Hansen. Then we might convince a grand jury that Wade S. is capable of the unthinkable…God damn. Every bite must be a trillion calories.”
Tommy sticks half of his pastry into his mouth and gobbles it down in delight.
*
Natalie is asleep when I come home at six in the morning. So I go back out to the closet near the living room. I put the .44 on the top shelf. There is a wooden compartment that locks. The pistol goes inside. The six inch buck knife goes in the compartment, too.
But the nine millimeter stays with me all the time. I wear the holster except when I make love to my wife or when I take a shower or when I am compelled to otherwise be naked. When I am clothed, I am armed, especially now, with this current business.
It’s too close to the birth for us to make love anymore, and of course that makes me hornier than a rooster in the veritable henhouse. I want her desperately, but I’m not going to jeopardize my son or my wife, naturally.
“Jimmy?”
She wakes up as soon as I’m lying down next to her.
“I didn’t mean to—“
“It’s okay, baby. I’ve had plenty of sleep lately. Too much. I have to get up and walk because my back gets sore, and then when your mom ca
tches me—“
“You’re supposed to be in bed. She’s just doing her job.”
“I know. She’s so sweet…My own mother didn’t have any problem yelling at me. Your mom never yells.”
“You’re the daughter she never had. She loves you like her own, you know.”
“I know. And I adore your mother. But my back gets sore and I gotta get up.”
“It won’t be much longer. Just a month.”
“Easy for you to say, paisan…Jimmy, how’s it going?”
“I got into Wade S’s face. I don’t think it impressed him, though.”
“He’s a shark. His eyes were dead, the time I was there.”
“Got a lotta life for a dead man, then.”
“You know what I mean, dammit!”
“Don’t get angry with the old man, babe. I might crumble up and disappear.”
She kisses me and pulls the top half of me over to her.
“You’ll never fall apart, Jimmy. You’re like that Timex watch—takes a lickin’, keeps on tickin’.”
She kisses me with some heat.
“Take it easy, little tiger,” I warn her. “Don’t get daddy all revved up.”
“Why not? I still know which of your buttons to push.”
“I like to be able to please you, Red. We’re supposed to lay off all that.”
“I have my way with you whenever I want, Lieutenant.”
“That’s the problem. I have to behave.”
“But I don’t.”
She kisses me again, and when she touches me it suddenly becomes tropical in our bedroom even though I know it’s cool and still only early spring outside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
We get photographs of the local Russian Mafia from Kelvin and The Chicago Bureau of the FBI. Kelvin has made good his word to communicate with us, and I’m wondering why it can’t be this way all over the nation.
“Women Mafiosi?” Spencer laughs when he sees the single photo of a female.
“They’d call her an associate. I think they’re as chauvinistic as the Sicilians,” I tell my partner. “But it says here that she is known to be a contract killer. Six arrests, no convictions. They have fine legal representation.”
Her name is Karin Vonskaya. She also got into this country by marrying an American. Her husband, unfortunately, only made it just past their honeymoon—two months of wedded bliss. Then he had an accident and fell down the stairs into his basement and broke his neck. They couldn’t pin Murder One or anything else on Karin, so she waltzed away free to do her contract murders. She is also believed to be one of the lovers of Alexei Grodnov, one of the heterosexual lovers of Grodnov, anyway.
Her face reminds me of someone. Then it comes to me. Remove the dark brown, long, almost black hair, replace it with shorter auburn tresses, and you’ve got my wife, Natalie. They could be twins—separated at birth. Except my old lady is strictly a Mick, and her eyes are green, not these dark brown almost black eyes that Karin Vonskaya sports. She is two inches taller than Natalie, also, but the facial resemblance is uncanny.
“She looks like Red,” Tommy says.
“You read my mind,” I reply.
Two of Carlo’s people wind up with their throats cut. They were two of the guineas assigned to keep an eye on the Russians. Carlo hits them back and disappears two of the Russians. I say ‘disappears’ because they come up on missing persons—we’ve got their photos, so that’s how we know they belong to Grodnov once they show up on the missing list. Grodnov’s lawyers pitch the bitch about the Italians whacking two of theirs, but my Captain asks them for habeas corpus , so they of course can’t gripe much more.
“Is she personal stock?” I ask my cousin Carlo. I’m referring to the gorgeous black stripper, naturally. Tommy can’t keep his eyes off her either.
“That’s a rather insulting thing to ask, Lieutenant,” Ciccio replies.
“No offense, Carlo. You have excellent taste,” I tell him.
“Oh man,” Tommy concurs, without moving his eyes off her, up on the stage across from us sitting in the booth.
“I’d appreciate it if this were the last time you met me here,” my cousin says.
“All right. I understand.”
“What do you want this time?”
“I want you to pull back from the Russians. I don’t need a gang war, Carlo.”
“Funny, cuz. Neither do we.”
“So they took two, you whacked them back. Now call it off.”
“We don’t call anything off. They hit us, there ain’t no evening up until they’re all morte.”
“One more hit from either side and I’ll unleash the Feds. They’re ready to move anyway, but there won’t be any hands off for the work you’ve done for us. I’d hate to see you go away from your ebony babe, Carlo, but I’ll do it if you keep up the mattress action with the Russians.”
He gazes at the black girl on stage. She is breathtaking. I know that Tommy agrees because his eyes are still on her.
“When you go away, can I have her number?” Tommy smiles. Now he’s looking right at Ciccio.
“Fuck yourself!” Carlo says and jerks himself to a standing position.
“She means that much to you?” Tommy asks.
“She’s no whore. She’s a dancer!”
“Then I apologize,” Tommy says.
Carlo sits back down.
“Cool off,” I tell him. “He apologized.”
“I’m tired of being fucked with.”
“I’ll tell the Russians that there’s a truce. My offer will sound very acceptable to Grodnov. Trust me.”
“What offer can you make him? They’re fucking animals. He fucks little boys!”
“I know. We know. He knows that I know and we know that he knows it. Just back off, Carlo. You gave us some good stuff and we’ll remember you. We’ll call a truce with you too—temporarily. Then I’d think about going legit, Cousin. You pay your IRS to the penny, you still make good money. Drop the whores and the dope. Let the Russians go to jail with the Vietnamese and the Hispanic gangs.”
“You always were a fuckin’ dreamer, Jimmy P. Me going straight… Do you tell a wolf to lie down with the sheep? Sunday school ended a thousand years ago, Lieutenant.”
“Back off on the Russians. Let us take them down now. Think about a national chain of titty bars with hot wings on the side. Become a solid citizen, Cousin.”
“Fuck you, Jimmy. I mean really. Fuck you.”
I smile and I get up. Spencer and I head out to the street.
*
Natalie becomes more and more uncomfortable as June approaches. It’s almost baby month, and she’s as big as a double wide. She waddles when she gets out of the bed, and I take her to all her ob/gynecologist appointments.
This is the last week in May. Her appointments are dwindling. Soon we’ll be making the hospital run for the delivery of Jimmy P Number Two—or Junior, as my wife calls him.
The clinic is on the northwest side, way out near the city limits. I park the car, and then I huff and puff as I get Red out of the family’s Plymouth Voyager. She is wearing her lightweight maternity garb. It looks like she’s got a junior sized tent over her top half, and the stretch pants are as taut as a banjo string. She’s gained more weight than the doctor would like, but most of her heft comes from Junior. He’s going to be a big boy, the ob/gynecologist, Eleanor Chapman, insists.
When we get into the building, I see her at the end of the hall. I see her just momentarily, and then she disappears.
“Jimmy? What’s the matter?” Natalie asks.
I’ve stopped both of us dead, in the middle of the hall. Patients are streaming by us in both directions.
“What’s wrong?” she repeats.
“I thought…I thought I saw someone.”
“Well c’mon. We’ll be late. Eleanor hates tardy patients.”
“I’m sorry. Okay…”
“Who did you think you saw?”
I don’t thi
nk. I know who I saw. Tall. Dark brown hair. My wife’s twin.
Karin Vonskaya, the contract killer.
*
I burst through the door of the sprinkler outlet on the northside, but Grodnov is not at the desk.
“Get him,” I tell the blond kid who serves as a lookout here at the sprinkler store which fronts for the Russians.
“Pardon me, sir?”
I lean across the reception desk.
“Get Grodnov or I’ll go back there and find him myself, but not until I’ve broken your nose and your fucking arm too. You understand me, sonny?”
The blond youth gets up and walks quickly to the back of the store. He goes through the door to the back room, and soon Grodnov appears.
“I hear you threatened my Godson,” he tells me.
“Is that what you call him?” I smile.
“I have no desire to speak to you, Lieutenant—“
“If I ever see that tall bitch near my wife or near me again, I’ll come find you, and all those punks you’ve got back there won’t save you.”
“What bitch is that?”
“Your killer cunt. Karin Vonskaya.”
“I know no one by that—“
“Save the bullshit. We’ve got her picture and her complete jacket.”
“Like I said, Lieutenant, I really don’t know who this Karin—“
“The Sicilians had a thing for laying off civilians and their families. You got problems with me, be a man. Deal with me. My wife has nothing to do with any of you, now. If I think you’re threatening her or my kid, I’ll take care of you myself. No cops, no Feds, no Outfit…Just me. I’ll come for you. And I won’t play fair. It’ll be when you least expect it, and I won’t promise I won’t shoot you in the back of your fucking head.
“Stay away from my wife. I’ll make Karin disappear, and then you’ll be the next to vanish.”
I turn and walk away from Grodnov.
*
“You shouldn’t have gone there alone,” Tommy tells me at HQ. “I am your partner, no?”
“You’re my partner. This is personal.”