Jimmy Parisi Part Two Box Set

by Thomas Laird

  A teenaged boy rips open the door to his 1964 Impala and hops out onto the scene of the ‘accident’.

  “Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh God!!” he wails as he sees Grodnov on the blacktop.

  Grodnov has been gutted, we observe as we rush up to his prone body, but he is not dead yet. Kelvin arrives just after Spencer and I get to the Russian. One of the other plainclothesmen takes the sobbing teenaged boy back to his Impala. Kelvin calls for the paramedics, but it is difficult to even look down on Grodnov. He looks like he was blasted apart at Omaha Beach by German artillery. The grill of the Chevy has torn him open, and his innards are fully exposed until a cop runs to his vehicle and retrieves a blanket to cover the mess.

  The paramedics arrive in seven minutes, and it is a miracle that Grodnov is still breathing. And it is another miracle that he’s still alive when they somehow stuff him back together inside half a plastic body bag and get him into an ambulance and then head toward St. Mark’s Hospital.

  *

  “He going to survive?” I ask the ER surgeon, Mike Ballard, here at St. Mark’s.

  “Does a gutted fish survive?”

  “It’s a sure thing he’s not going to make it?”

  “We sewed him back up, but there’s a massive loss of blood. He comes in and out of consciousness, and we’ve got him pumped with morphine.”

  “Can he talk at all?”

  “I doubt it, Lieutenant.”

  “Can I give it a try?”

  “I don’t think he’ll know you’re there.”

  “So it won’t make any difference, then, right Doctor?”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “Alexei…Can you hear me?”

  His eyes flutter. Tommy stands behind me.

  “No use, Jimmy. The Doc was right.”

  “Lieutenant…”

  The voice is not much more than a grunt, a whispered grunt at that.

  “You hear me, Alexei?”

  He tries to muster a smile on his lips, but his white face won’t allow it. I’ve seen dying men before, many times, and this man is on his way out soon.

  “Can you hear me?”

  He nods just slightly, but he’s in pain beyond the reach of the morphine they’re dosing him with.

  “Is there anything you want to tell me? Is there anything you have to say?”

  “I…I…”

  “I’m here. I’m listening.”

  “I am…the devil.”

  He tries to raise his lips into a grin, but his eyes flutter, and then he breathes out heavily. The monitor shows his heart rate has ceased, and Tommy goes for a doctor. When the ER surgeon returns, he sees the flat line. He checks his pulse. He examines his staring eyes. Then he brings in a nurse, and a few minutes later they pronounce Alexei Grodnov dead.

  *

  “We still can’t get Wade Hansen. They’ve already signed the agreement. It is in effect ever since he signed his statement against Grodnov, so he still gets Witness Protection. Johnny Adams is a very astute lawyer. He made sure nothing was contingent upon Grodnov surviving long enough to get to court. He’s still a free man, Jimmy,” Spencer says, here in my cubicle.

  It’s five o’clock. Natalie will be released in an hour. I’ve got to leave for the hospital in a few minutes. Spencer tells me he’ll take care of the paperwork.

  “He said he was the devil,” I tell my partner.

  “Maybe he was right…At least the little boy didn’t get hurt. But that teenager who came barreling into Grodnov is still in shock, the last I heard.”

  “He ought to get the bronze star. I’m going to see him in the morning.”

  “I’ll come with you. But they may not let us in if he’s still in shock.”

  “We’ll wait ‘til he comes out of it, one way or the other, Tommy.”

  “I hear you.”

  I clear the top of my desk. Then I go over to the outstanding case whiteboard. I take the dry ink eraser and remove Grodnov’s name.

  The problem is that one name remains on that list. Karin Vonskaya is still prominent on my whiteboard, in red. We were right about her. She didn’t take off with him. She took off on her own. She didn’t want to simplify things by getting cuffed alongside her sometime lover.

  Karin is still out in the bush. Things won’t be finished until I meet up with her, but I’ve got no time to lose. Natalie and James Manion Parisi await me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  They were going to bring her the baby any minute, and then Jimmy was on his way here to pick them up and bring them home.

  Jenny Owens, the chubby little brunette nurse brought Jimmy Junior to her. They had a temporary carrier made of cardboard for him. He was wrapped in his brief nightshirt and a blue blanket. He wore his stocking cap also so that the difference between the air conditioning and the blistering heat of the outside air wouldn’t be too much of a shock when they emerged outside to go home.

  “He is a handsome boy. He’ll have both of your features, I think,” the nurse smiled at her. Then Jenny Owens left Natalie alone with Jimmy Junior.

  “Can you sit on the bed while I go potty?” Natalie looked down at her son in his carrier, atop the bed.

  She stooped down and kissed him, but he was asleep. He already slept four or five hours without stirring, and Natalie hoped he’d keep that kind of behavior up at home.

  She went into the single room’s bathroom, and she shut the door out of habit. She was going to keep it cracked open with him in the room, but she’d only be in here for a moment. Natalie thought she heard the hospital room’s door being opened out there, but Jimmy Senior wasn’t due yet, and he was always punctual. And Nurse Owens had already left. The nurse was going to get the papers ready to be signed for the dismissal.

  Natalie flushed and zipped and walked out of the bathroom door. When she saw the empty, temporary baby carrier, she screamed, and then she ran for the door and the hallway.

  It was a slow night in maternity and two of the RN’s had called in sick. It would take Jenny Owens thirty minutes on her own on the ward until the three subs could report in for the late shift. Luckily there were no emergencies and no deliveries, and she figured she could gut it out until the half hour elapsed and until her relief arrived around 6:30 P.M.

  The tall woman approached Jenny Owens at the nurses’ station. The only other RN on duty was inside maternity itself, keeping an eye on the newborns.

  “My sister is in labor. They’re bringing her up now, but she’s bleeding. They told me to tell you to meet them by the elevator. Please!”

  Owens came around from the nurses’ station desk and headed for the elevators, as the tall woman pleaded her to do.

  But Jenny never made it to those elevators because about fifteen feet from them, someone turned the lights out.

  Karin hit her precisely against her left temple and knocked her cold. Then she dragged the short nurse into the nearest closet and shut the door. Karin took off her jacket and threw it on top of the unconscious nurse. She opened the gym bag and she changed into the RN’s uniform she’d brought with her while she stood over the knocked out woman in the dimly lit closet. She got the hat in place on her head, and then she left Jenny Owens lying on the floor of the broom closet.

  She had a hypo for Natalie Parisi, but when she opened the door, she couldn’t believe her good fortune. The box with the infant lay on the bed, but Natalie was apparently in the john with the door shut. So she put the hypo back into her pocket and quickly snatched up the sleeping child and walked off down the hall toward the closet where Jenny Owens slept soundly.

  She’d left the gym bag along with her jacket in the broom closet. When she returned, the little nurse was still out cold, luckily, so she changed back into her street clothes. She was wearing a blonde wig that was short—the hair barely made her shoulders. And she wore wide sunglasses that covered a third of her face. Karin placed the sleeping infant into the gym bag and zipped it only halfway so that the child could breathe. She figured Pari
si’s son would make a great bargaining chip for her to leave the country. Now that the news said Alexei had been killed in some kind of traffic mishap, Karin Vonskaya would become a primary target for Parisi and all those other cops. Sooner or later they would find her, as they found Alexei just minutes before he was hit in the street.

  The little nurse began to stir on the floor beneath her and the baby in the gym bag, so Karin kicked her with the tip of her right toe near the left temple once more, and Jenny Owens went silent.

  She opened the broom closet door quietly and began to walk toward the elevator. She was on the seventh floor and needed to descend to the main floor to get out into the street. Karin could not believe that no one had challenged her, but she heard the cry of a woman down the hall, and she knew it must be Natalie Parisi. She knew the mother of this child had to be hysterical over her missing boy, and something like a smile crossed Karin’s lips as the elevator doors shut in front of her. She pressed the button for the first floor, but now she could hear the gradually increasing screams of the distraught female Homicide detective, searching out for her missing son.

  *

  Jimmy Parisi walked through the hospital’s front door at 5:59 P.M. He was about to become late if he didn’t get to that maternity floor room in one hell of a hurry. Just as he arrived at those doors, the elevator opened and a tall blonde with a gym bag and overly-large sunglasses strode off the lift. Jimmy walked right past her and got on the empty car.

  The doors swooshed slowly closed, and just as the car was about to rise, Parisi heard the wail. Then he remembered the size of the woman who’d just departed the elevator car, he remembered the blonde hair and the sunglasses, and he remembered the howl that had come at him from outside the closed doors.

  He hit the emergency stop button, and then he hit One again. The car slowly lowered back to where it had begun. It seemed to take a long time for the doors to open, but finally they separated and Parisi bolted out into the hall.

  He saw the tall woman walking toward the lobby and the exit, and then he began to sprint after her. When he had cut the distance in half, the blonde with the gym bag began to turn around toward him. Jimmy Parisi turned the sprint into a full blast gallop, but now he had the .44 Bulldog in his right hand, and the woman saw the gun and came to an abrupt stop, about twenty yards from the lobby. Two women walking in the same hallway saw the gun in his hand and screamed loudly.

  “Get back!” Parisi yelled at the two, and they turned and scrambled away.

  Karin produced the hypo in her left hand.

  “I will kill him,” she said evenly. It was loud enough for Parisi to hear her.

  Another figure approached from behind Karin Vonskaya. Jimmy was about to tell the figure to halt until he made out who it was.

  “Put the needle down.”

  “You will allow me to leave unmolested. You will get me aboard a private jet. I will tell the pilot where we’re going after takeoff. If you help me get out of the country, I will spare your son. If not, he’ll never see his new home.”

  “You’re not leaving this hospital.”

  “And why is that?” Karin Vonskaya asked.

  “Turn around and see,” Parisi smiled.

  Karin wheeled about, the gym bag firmly in hand. The child inside the bag cried out loudly, and as he did, at the last second, Karin must have seen the flash of Natalie Parisi’s foot as it crashed squarely into the Russian woman’s face, shattered her nose, and sent her sprawling toward the floor. And as Karin flew backward, she let loose of the gym bag.

  It was as if she’d purposely flung the bag right to Jimmy Parisi, who caught it with both hands.

  While Karin was on the floor, out cold herself now, Natalie let loose with two more vicious kicks to her ribs, and the redhead was about to deliver a third blow when her husband grabbed her about the waist and held her back.

  Then the security people finally swarmed them and Lieutenant Jimmy Parisi flashed his ID and badge so they wouldn’t arrest him and Natalie. Parisi got on his cellphone and called for the troops to come collect the unconscious female assassin who lay sprawled on the floor with a broken nose and, undoubtedly, with several broken ribs.

  Finally Natalie unzipped the gym bag and took out their bawling boy. She clutched Jimmy Junior to her breast, and then she began to weep. Her husband kissed her, but she wouldn’t let the infant go to his father.

  “Not yet, Jimmy,” she told the Homicide. “Not yet. I’ll relent when we get home. I may not let go of him until he goes to college,” she laughed, with tears coursing down her freckled cheeks.

  “He won’t let you hold him like that very long anyway, so get your money’s worth, baby,” he told his wife.

  Spencer showed up with some uniforms in ten minutes. He’d been at the Loop HQ anyway, and it wasn’t far from the hospital. The emergency people were treating Karin Vonskaya for the pummeling she’d received at the hands of Parisi’s wife, and there were three security officers in the hospital room with the doctors and the Russian woman. Now some Chicago policemen would be joining the entourage.

  “Undoubtedly she’ll be looking to cut a deal of her own,” Spencer said as he and Jimmy and wife and son all sat in the lobby.

  “Right now all I want to do is go home,” Natalie said. The baby was quiet once more and sleeping against her chest.

  “I don’t see why you can’t take off,” Tommy Spencer told them.

  Jimmy got up and grabbed hold of his partner’s hands.

  “If he hadn’t let loose crying, out in that hall…”

  “But he did, Dad,” Tommy smiled. “He knew his old man would come for him. And his Momma too.”

  Natalie walked over to Tommy and kissed him on the cheek. She showed him Jimmy Junior.

  “He says thank you to his Uncle Tommy too.”

  “It’s over now, Jimmy. It’s finally over. Go home. Spend some time with your son. Start looking at retirement options, because I’ll be joining you soon.”

  Parisi shook hands with Tommy Spencer, and then he took his wife and new son out the door.

  *

  Karin Vonskaya indeed did attempt to cut herself a deal with the FBI with Witness Protection as her payoff, but the feds refused since they had Grodnov and both of his lieutenants beneath six feet of dirt, all of them. She really had very little to offer them, Kelvin explained to her, and no one was going to look to cut deals with someone who kidnapped a policeman’s son and someone who threatened to stick said child with a hypo full of adrenalin, enough adrenalin to kill Simba the Elephant, as a matter of fact. That same needle was meant to murder Natalie Parisi, another member of the copper community, so Karin Vonskaya’s stock value had hit the skids. Agent Kelvin promised her she’d be enjoying federal cuisine for several lifetimes.

  Jimmy Parisi walked into his office on the following Monday. He was still on his furlough, but he wanted to clean her name off his caseboard. He took the eraser and removed Karin Vonskaya’s name from that whiteboard, and now the slate was clean.

  He went into the Captain’s office and handed him the written resignation. Then he located Tommy Spencer and convinced him to take an early lunch, which Spencer readily agreed to.

  *

  Garvin was present at his new incarnation of bar in Berwyn on this Monday morning. Spencer and Parisi and the barman were watching CNN while the two detectives went after some of Garvin’s finest bratwursts. Parisi drank an Old Style Light, but Tommy Spencer was still on duty and went with a Sprite. Garvin drank ice water as always, since he’d been a recovering alcoholic ever since the Battle of the Bulge. He’d given up the hootch after Patton’s troops saved all those guys in that famous battle around Christmas of 1944. Garvin had explained to Parisi long ago that when that snow stopped and when the Air Corps saved all those troopers along with the tank command of George Patton, Garvin had begun to believe in God again, and his belief led him to Alcoholics Anonymous—there were a couple of members in his platoon. The AA members had made Garv
in a believer after the Bulge, so John Garvin drank ice water when he was thirsty.

  “How many hours in this dump for you and me?” John asked Parisi.

  “Throw in Doc, and you’re talking a lifetime.”

  “And now you’ve quit the coppers,” Garvin said.

  “No. I quit Homicide. I think I might like to teach. At the Academy, maybe. Maybe in a junior college. I don’t know yet, John.”

  “He’ll be back on the job within six months,” Tommy Spencer smiled.

  Parisi looked at his partner and smiled.

  “And this time you’d be wrong.”

  “Some crazy son of a bitch kills a house full of people, you’ll be back on the job. It’s your specialty, Jimmy P. The series guys. The serial dudes. You can’t keep your hands off them and neither can I. It’s like a guy addicted to sex. It’s not like he’s ever gonna become a monk or a virgin. He’s got to have his fix once in a while. In a city like Chicago, someone’s always coming round, just in time for the Captain to knock on your door and convince you to come back to work. Because it’s home, Jimmy P. You know it as well as I do. It’s in your Guinea blood, and in mine too. We just can’t let the pricks get away with the Big Murder One—especially when they try to pull it off in multiples.”

  “My board is clean.”

  Spencer smiled again.

  “For the time being…Here’s looking at you, kid,” Tommy toasted, and lifted his mug of Sprite off Garvin’s bar.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The memorial service took place at ground zero of the Anderson Building explosion early in November of 2002. The streets had to be closed because there were almost a hundred thousand onlookers here, including me and Tommy Spencer. I met Spencer at Headquarters, and then we walked the distance to the service. The wind off the Lake gave us a hint of the cold winter that was headed our way. The wind off Lake Michigan is referred to as ‘The Hawk.’ It comes out of the northeast, and when it’s January or February, it can be numbing and intolerable, but in the late fall it is more like invigorating and refreshing—if you don’t take it in large doses.