by Thomas Laird
“Goddammit! I know you can’t put hands on me!”
“Say it again, Andy. Go on,” Doc soothes.
“I got nothing to tell you.”
“Twenty years,” I tell him. “Maybe longer. We might be able to put you on scene without your help, and that’d be accessory to murder. Then you’d be in for life, or maybe they’d light you up. You never know what a Cook County jury’s going to do. They might not like it that your buddy beat a nice old retired guy to death. They might figure you’d be better off in the ground, Andy.”
“I ain’t got nothing to tell you.”
“Okay, then. The deal’s off the table. You can count the minutes until Robbery comes to haul you off that lumberyard job. Two times? Your boss probably won’t want someone like you hanging around his place of business. I know I wouldn’t.
“Take it slow, Andy. We’ll be seeing you again real soon, I’m sure.”
Doc feints a move toward Shea’s chair one last time, but Andy bolts upright.
“Let’s do this again real soon,” Gibron grins at him.
*
The bit about Robbery interviewing him was fake, but Shea doesn’t know it. Hopefully he’ll be doing a lot of looking over his shoulders for a while. He doesn’t know we have nothing, and I’m betting he doesn’t know that the Grand Theft coppers don’t have his fingerprints on anything, either. The kid was right. They’d already have pinched him long ago. But I’m counting on his stupidity and I’m hoping the talk about two decades in prison found its mark in his soft skull. And he might be considering the crack about becoming an accessory to murder, also. At least I may have planted a seed.
We’ll keep a tail on him just to keep him alert to our presence.
*
The newspapers make headlines with the six girls’ murders. They haven’t tied the security man or the bag lady to the series killings of the kids, but they’ll probably get wind, soon enough. Doc and I haven’t said anything to anyone in the media, but word gets around in spite of the primaries’ silence. People talk in every department of the police. The news people have their informants. They’re not above bribing cops, either. I’ve been offered money for information, and I’ve also replied with an offer of my own, free dental work with a fist. They steer clear of me, now.
The papers give the biographies of the teenagers. They’re almost identical. No parents (who gave a shit about them), no extended families to bring them in off the street, and no inclination to become wards of the state, even though social agencies did reach out for them. It’s hard to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.
I thought it was remarkable that it took as long as it did for the news people to latch onto their stories, but the girls are called “low profile” cases by some. The fact that they were selling themselves comes into play, as well, because some people don’t think that prostitutes are worthy of our civic concern.
To me and Doc, all murders are equal. The only thing that social position means is that there will be more moral outrage and indignation when a “high profiler” gets whacked. We really don’t distinguish the worth of the murders we investigate. There are Homicides who do press harder on well-publicized killings. I don’t get the distinction. Killing is killing. Top of the list of “thou shalt nots.”
*
Casey McCaslin, 1979
You have to watch your back every minute, out in the yard. The coons have their troops, and so do the Mexes. The Aryan Brothers are a force in Joliet, too, and they’re probably the most lethal of all the crews. There aren’t many Micks in here, and the ones who are aren’t organized, so I have to watch out for my own ass.
I’ve got a little thing with cigarettes going. My first week here, I won pretty big in cards, and you play for cigarettes because they don’t allow us to carry cash. Too much of a temptation for these crews to cut your fucking kidneys out in the showers, I guess.
I won enough to start a little trade with the butts. I traded for more than cigarettes, though. Got into a little dope, as well, and after a few more weeks, people were coming to me for their needs, nicotine-wise and otherwise. I got into the dope via my cellmate. He said he was looking for help in the distribution, and I was more than happy to expand my horizons. I’ve got a little coke, a little meth, and a few prescription drugs.
You got to stay busy. Otherwise you go stale. And I don’t plan on staying in Joliet much longer. My lawyer, Fred Rebholtzer, is one of the finest criminal mouthpieces in Cook County. I fired the guy I had first, and Fred says if he’d been my counselor, I never would’ve got the guilty verdict. He says the cops got the information about my stashes upstairs illegally, that the judge who signed the search warrant has his fucking brains leaking out his ears, and Fred says we’re going to appeal and get a new trial, and when that search warrant gets trashed, I’ll be out of here.
Fred’s expensive, but I had cash hidden away. About two hundred grand. I’ve been hoarding money for ten years, just in case I ever needed some lawyering up. Maybe old Fred can go after Parisi’s badge, too, and perhaps he can get Gibron canned as well, but I’ll be happy just to get out of this fucking place.
The only way you can survive Joliet is to be a businessman. Otherwise, you’re meat. If they’re not fucking you in the ass in the showers, they’re slicing you for telling them you won’t bend over, in the yard. I haven’t got even a little homo in me. Thinking of fucking a man or sucking his schwantz is way far away from me.
But even if you have some rackets inside, like I do, it’s still way too fucking dangerous in here. Fred has got to come through and get me out. The pressure cooker is building. I need to hunt, again. The dreams are getting more serious, night after night. I woke up my bunkmate, Sal Donato, last night, when I yelped out when I dreamed the old lady was at it again on me with the old man’s strap. I actually felt the leather slap against my forearms, but I couldn’t wake myself up right away. I was thinking it was only a dream, but I was trapped up in it with no way to wake myself, and she kept thrashing away, and the stings were absolutely real—I could hear them and feel them, too. I could almost smell the vodka on the old lady’s breath. She kept beating me and screaming at me, and it wouldn’t end.
Then Sal kicked my mattress from beneath me, and I finally came out of it.
“The fuck’s wrong with you, Dude?” he called at me from below.
“Just—Just a bad dream. Sorry, man.”
“Stop taking your own product, motherfucker. You must be sniffin’ some really bad shit, partner.”
Then he rolled over and began snoring again in seconds, but I was up the rest of the night. The only way to stop those fucking nightmares is to stay awake, but I can’t do that very often. So she keeps coming around, soon as my eyelids close.
I don’t beat off, like all these other convicts. You’ll see them doing it right out in the open in the showers. Guards never go in the showers unless they hear screaming. They don’t care if guys are doing each other or doing themselves, as long as it’s quiet in here. You can kill a motherfucker, just as long as you don’t do it loud.
I did whores, back in the city. I never went out with women just to go out. And I’m not interested in some kind of deal where I have to be accountable to some bitch. I never had girlfriends in high school or after. I’d take out punchboards, sure things, or I’d pay a pro, later, when I was making money with the crew. Having it let loose is important. Don’t want that fucking prostate problem. The doc here already stuck a gloved thumb up my ass when I was examined the first day. He was looking for tumors or some shit, and he said if you don’t use it, you lose it. Sounded like a commercial for choking your chicken or doing your bunkmate or some bitch in the showers.
Women are all right for just one thing. I have no sexual desire for young girls. It’s like I said—I’m prohibiting them from turning into a cunt like my old lady. They’re never going to be pulling the train for a bunch of clap-ridden little cocksuckers on the south side. They’re never going to pa
ss on the disease to every hardon who dips his wick. They’re never going to spawn other little gashes or would-be stiffies who keep the cycle alive.
The only thing that feels a little like a cum is the look on their faces when they just give it up and resign themselves to what I’m about to do to them. It’s just about the time I show them the straight razor. Their lights begin to dim as I show them that kinch, that keen edge that’s going to drain all those petty hopes from them. That knife is going to remove all those earthly fucking woes they’ve already acquired in even those few years alive they’ve notched.
They had me interviewed by a female shrink after I took the physical here. I think she does all the new meat. Her name was Iris Mathews, and she looked like she was fresh out of college. She asked me a lot of questions, and I played along and made up answers I knew would fuck up her profile that she was doing on me.
She asked me toward the end about my mother, and I told her the unfiltered truth about the beatings the old bitch laid on me, and I believe she thought I was lying to her, then, after all the previous bullshit I told her prior to that moment.
Iris looked scared, and it reminded me of the way all those cuties looked, their mouths taped with the duct tape and their hands and feet tied up real secure, as well.
Almost gave me wood to see Iris’ eyes widen and her cheeks get all taut looking. She wears glasses and they keep slipping down the bridge of her nose, and she keeps hoisting them back upward as I go on and on about the brutality I lived through for all those years.
Then I tell her how I ended it with the old lady when I turned sixteen, how I drilled that bitch in the mouth with my fists until she fell on her back and how I kept on pummeling her as she begged me to stop. But her mouth was all broken and so were her front teeth, and she was spitting blood on me while I was on top of her on the tile of the kitchen floor, and how I kept hitting her even when I didn’t have the strength to make a fist anymore.
Then she rolled away from me, crawled into the bedroom, and then she somehow had enough left to pack her sparse shit and stagger out the door.
I left the next morning and started living on the streets. Never saw the old man again. Didn’t expect to. Heard he was living with some snatch or other.
I never saw my mother again after that night I nearly killed her.
When I tell all that to Iris, I see no tears in the shrink’s eyes, but I see something else, all over her face.
Chapter 7
Mary O’Connor, 1979
I look up at the acoustic tile, here in the shelter. This used to be an office building, just at the edge of the southern Loop. It’s a bad hood, now, naturally, because none of the Gold Coasters want us around their high rise heavens. I’m trying to figure out how much longer I can hang out here before Social Services tries to place me in a foster home. No one here really believes I’m eighteen, but the counselor, his name is Rob, took mercy on me when I explained that I had no ID that proved my age.
I have a birth certificate back at the old lady’s apartment, but after the last blowup, there’s no way I’m going back there again. This time I might stick a kitchen knife into her, and I can’t see doing prison over the likes of her. This place is bad enough, the shelter I mean, but Rob and the people who work here are kind spirited, for the most part. They don’t preach to us or try to reform us, but, like I said, sooner or later some pencil pusher will find me and try to put me in a foster situation because I look like I’m about fourteen.
It’s funny, because my young looks make me attractive on the streets. There are lots of twisted damned pretzels out there looking for young cooze—illegal young cooze—and I seem to fit their bills. I’ve turned away the ones I thought were really suspicious looking, but then I run out of money, and sometimes I have to take what I can get.
Abby comes over to see me, even when the lights are out and when I’m pretending to be asleep. She’s about my age, maybe a little younger, but her face looks way older than she really is. I think the word for her is “haggard.” She smokes a lot of dope, mostly weed, because the other stuff is too pricey. I think she said she snorts a little heroine, if she runs into the right kind of john on the streets. She’s in the same line of work I’m in.
She helps herself and sits right down on the bed, next to me. She has to whisper or the counselor on duty will come and kick her out. Lights out means quiet on the floor.
She’s got red hair and freckles, but all the long lines in her face don’t make her look young and fresh, which is why she takes on anybody who waves ten bucks in her face. She’s come in here beat up a few times, too.
“I got some primo dope. Want a toke?”
“No thanks.”
“You some kinda virgin queen?”
“You’re bein’ too loud, Abby.”
“Shit. All it can do is get us kicked outta here.”
“Yeah, and it’s cold out there. Have you noticed?”
“Might as well get used to it, Mary. It’s where we do our trade.”
“I’m not planning on doing it for the rest of my life, either.”
She stands up. I can just barely make out her face because of the dim light out in the hallway. She might be a lot better looking if she didn’t beat hell out of herself with her “primo dope” and with the help of the trash who beats on her out there, all the time.
“You don’t have to go,” I tell her. “We can talk. Just keep it down. I’m tired and I gotta sleep soon.”
She grudgingly sits back where she was.
“You really think you’ll get out of here alive?”
There’s a glistening in her eyes that even the dim wattage can’t hide.
I touch her hand, and then she grips me back strong, and it sort of startles me. But I let her hold on. It’s not like she’s trying to make a move on me. There are girls in here who’ve tried to get close to me that way, but I found a big flashlight in the garbage out in the street, and I hide it under my pillow when I come here, and I don’t have any trouble showing them my mini club if they get ideas that I’m one of their bitches.
“I really think I will,” I tell her.
“You know what the odds are? I mean, do you know how long one of us survives this shit? We’re face down in the lake or the river before we hit twenty-one, most of us.”
“I’m not going to die in the river or in the lake. I know that much. And I’m not going to die any time soon, either.”
“What do you think you’re going to do, Mary? Go to college, get a job, and meet some perfect hunk who’ll give you little blonde, perfect kids, one after the other?”
I laugh, and then she laughs, too.
I put a finger to my lips.
“Don’t get us laughing. They’ll throw us both out, and I really gotta sleep, Abby. I’m sorry.”
“You know what? I got this stupid idea that you’re getting out of here. And I got this really bright, true notion that drugs and all this other shit are gonna kill me soon. So how come you get to be so goddam lucky and I don’t?”
I see the droplets course down her cheeks for real, this time, and she gets up and walks away from me before I can tell her that I know she’s not going to go the way she said she was, and then I hear her footfalls getting softer and softer as she disappears into the dark.
*
Jimmy Parisi, 1979-1980
The New Year is here, and Casey is still in the joint in Joliet. Andy Shea has still been toughing it out regardless of the times we show ourselves to him while cruising his neighborhood. He did get canned from his lumberyard job, we found out, but it gives us very little solace. We’ve got eight dead people on our redline list in my office. We’ve got all eight names written in blood red ink, and they’ve been on my wall, like the fucking elephant in the room, for far too long.
It’s February, and the winter rages on. It snows very nearly every other day, and getting to work from the southside is always a severe challenge. I always leave a half hour earlier than I normally do
, but I’ve been almost late a few times. The weather outside, as the song claims, is frightful. But it’s not so delightful in Headquarters because the media has been going berserk about the kids’ murders in particular. The story has been picked up nationally, and so our friends from the FBI are now in, in a big way, as they always are when there are national headlines involved.
It’s not that I don’t like any of the special agents in this city, but a number of their cops can be a bit egotistical about cases that were handed to the CPD initially, like the six girls. Now they have agents in here all the time trying to find out if there’s anything new about the case. They know we suspect Casey, and they’re looking at Andy Shea the way we did as a crack in McCaslin’s foundation.
But now we’re hearing drumbeats from Casey’s new mouthpiece who wants to get a new trial. His name is Fred Something, I can’t remember. Lawyers are not my favorite people, either, and I’m including our own prosecuting attorneys on that list of unfavorables.
Fred Somebody thinks he’s got a crack in our dike, too. He thinks the judge we got the search warrant from is cracked, himself. The truth is, the old judge is retiring this month, and he might have been just a wee bit demented when we got the warrant from him, and I’m worrying there might be something to Fred’s appeal.
That means Casey could possibly get out, if they throw out that shaky search warrant. Then McCaslin’s back in business. Unless we can hang one or eight murder raps around his cutthroat’s gizzard. One would be sufficient. The odds sound better when it’s only one out of eight we have to nail him for.
Doc agrees with me that the security guard would have been our best opportunity. Casey left nothing behind with the girls or with the street lady. We would have to have an organized killer, as Quantico calls them. They’re the hardest to put the cuffs on. They take great pains not to get caught, and it usually takes just dumbassed luck to collar them. I don’t see McCaslin making any stupid errors. He’s too cute.
And I don’t see him coming in to confess. Unless he has something in his past that we don’t know about. Some weak spot that makes him vulnerable to anything like a personal conscience on his part.