by Thomas Laird
“You cop to the Robbery police, and we’ll make sure you’re protected. We might even lighten up on the boom that’s going to fall on your whole merry group, real soon,” I tell him.
“What fucking boom?”
“You didn’t think you got away with the deal with the trucking outfit, did you?”
I’m lying, but he can’t know it.
“You got nothing on any of us. That’s why you’re tryin’ to squeeze me.”
“Got it all figured out, have you? You’re a tough guy, a wise guy, like O’Brien, no?” Doc counters. “If O’Brien were an Apache, he’d be in deep shit. Can’t go to Apache heaven with no eyes. Haven’t you ever seen a John Wayne movie, asshole?”
He looks at Doc as if my partner were insane.
“I’m not buyin’ your bullshit. Either one of you. You still have nothing after all this time, and you’re tryin’ to nail Casey for some robberies he didn’t do because you can’t get him for the girls you think he did. I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”
“You have no idea what an idiot we think you are,” Doc laughs.
“You’re putting all your chips on a guy who thinks you’re worth a mouse’s turd,” I tell the redheaded kid. “Casey’s not as bright as you all think he is, and now you know how loyal he is to you and the crew. It’s only a matter of time, Andy. You change your mind and come talk to us. You’d never think one guy could bleed as much as Mick O’Brien did. It made a lot of the cops on scene puke. Enjoy your free drink.”
We get up and leave, and I turn and see he’s watching us leave in the mirror behind the bar.
*
We try Billy Hardesty next, and when we roust him out of his parents’ bungalow on the southwest side, he’s so high on marijuana that we don’t bother to take him downtown. The guy’s mute from the weed, and he stinks so bad from it we don’t want him in the car with us to asphyxiate us both.
Next is Tommy Tracy. We catch him bagging groceries at the A & P, and he goes out back with us for a talk after I clear it with his manager. He’s playing stonewall, as well.
Jack Finerty tries to wise off with us downtown in the interview room, and Doc suspends the new rules and cuffs the clown on the back of his head. That smack causes Finerty to pay closer attention, but we get nothing from him, too.
It goes the same way with Colin Jones, Terry Murphy, Stevey Darcy, and Frank Joyce. They’re all playing it hard. We expected their reactions, but as Doc said, we’re planting seeds, and all we need is one sprout and Casey McCaslin goes back to jail while we keep digging for the mother lode, evidence for just one of the murders. With the law, all you have to do is get one life sentence or one execution. The fucker can only die once, and a lifetime in the slammer is the maximum for any sentencing.
His crew has definitely checkmated our asses, so far, however.
*
Doc flips the paperback magazine at me while we take our lunch at Vito’s Pub, one of the best pizza joints on the southside. They also make dynamic Italian beefs here, too. We’re doing the beefs, today, with Cokes because we’re in the middle of an afternoons shift, four to twelve.
“What’s this?” I ask.
Then I look at the cover. It’s called Triquarterly.
“It’s out of Northwestern,” he explains. “Look at the goddam cover,” he laughs.
There’s his full moniker, Harold S. Gibron. The S is for Stanley.
The word “Fiction” is on top of a list of names which includes my man, here.
“Jesus, is this the big time?” I ask him.
He’s got a mouth full of Italian beef. He nods and then he takes a drink of the Coke.
“In the world of pure thought and academia, it is,” he says.
“Goddam. Good for you.”
“It’s for you. It’s one of the three comp copies I received. They paid me fifty bucks, which is why you’re eating free, today.”
“That isn’t—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“How long is the story?” I ask him.
He takes another bite, so I have to wait, again.
“Long enough to read in one sitting in the shitter.”
“What’s it about?”
“Read the fucking thing, Jimmy, and then you tell me. I haven’t got the slightest idea.”
“Are there Cliff’s Notes?”
“Eat me, sweetheart.”
“I’m proud of you. I really am. This is important stuff. Now you can write your novel and get off this goddam shift shit, taking the trash off the streets. You can start hanging with all the literati. Isn’t that what they call them?”
He’s got a mouthful again. So I take my cue and start attacking the sandwich in front of me. Then I look over to him once more as he washes the food down.
“Are you ever going to quit this silly shit, really?”
“You have no idea how hard it is to get published, do you?”
“I confess. I’m ignorant of your line of work off the clock.”
“It’s a dream. Many attempt it, but few can do it. Full time, I mean. I might be able to get some writer-in-residence gig if I land a few more stories in these literary rags, and maybe if I can do a collection of them from some college press. It’s easy money. You teach a few classes a week, and then you work on your great American novel. All these college pukes are writing their great masterworks on the side while they’re copping a scope at the coeds’ tits.”
“You’re the man. You can do it.”
“Scott Fitzgerald got 122 rejection slips before he hit it. A lot of writers never got in ink at all, Jimmy. It’s a mean motherfucking business.”
“Got to be a cakewalk, compared to our current employment.”
“Yeah, I suppose. Don’t take this McCaslin shit so personal. It’s unhealthy. Any hang-up is unhealthy, partner.”
“Easy to say, harder to do.”
“Is he worth your sanity, my man? Is McCaslin worth losing your wife and family?”
“I know all that. But he’s assembled a baseball team of dead people, Doc.”
“You know how it goes. One or a thousand, like you guineas say, it’s all an infamnia. He’ll pay. You’re a Catholic, and you know that he’ll pay.”
“He’s not paying soon enough.”
“You have my complete sympathy. But every Homicide gets stuck with a red tag murder. You know that. The one that doesn’t get caught. Chicago, New York, L.A., Baltimore. Every copper in every city gets stymied at least once in his career, sometimes more than that. You’re not on the beat any longer. It’s the price you pay for playing in the major leagues. There will be disappointments. I’m so smart I became a writer, the profession that stinks of rejection. Get over it, Jimmy. Sometimes you just have to let go. Sometime soon, we might just have to let go of Casey McCaslin.
“But it ain’t over, yet, podna. Not by a long fucking shot, it ain’t over. I have a feeling there’s more to come.”
*
My vacation is the last two weeks in August. We go up to Williams Bay near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and we rent a room in some very expensive resort. Actually Erin is the one who made all this possible. She’s been squirreling money away for two years so we could come to this place. It has two king-sized beds, which our son and daughter are unhappy to share one of. They’re young enough that I don’t have to share with my boy and Erin has to share with our girl, so there’s nothing weird about the arrangements, and they’re too young to have a room of their own, and we hardly have the cash to spend on three suites.
They have tennis courts, multiple swimming pools and huge grounds with woods to hike in. There’s a movie theatre in Lake Geneva, and best of all for the kids, there’s nothing but fast food joints all over the place. We also cannot afford steakhouses and the like.
There’s a private beach we’ve been to in Williams Bay, many times before. For a couple bucks each you can use the facilities, and you can bring in your own food and drinks. No booze is allowed, and I like
that. There’s no action here for hoods from Chicago, teenaged punks. They all travel up to Lake Geneva itself, about ten miles away.
We’re ensconced on the beach at William’s Bay, right now. Erin carted a full load of shit onto the sand with me and the kids lending our hands. There are towels and beach blankets and a cooler and four folding chairs. It tired us out just setting up, but when we see the sparsely populated sand, we begin to relax. This is a Monday. Weekends are a beast, here, because every Yash and Mash from the city shows up, their cigarette packages tucked in their tee shirt sleeves, and it can become breathless, around here. During the week, though, it’s damn near idyllic. Peace and quiet and speed boats cruising by, out on the water, and kids in the surf of the lake, wading around, looking for non-existent shells. Birds swooping onto land, looking for food to peck at. A crew of ducks led by momma duck with her ducklings, once in a while coming ashore to look for scraps.
It’s the most stress-free kind of holiday I can think of, and I know that Erin was the master strategist behind all of this. I’ll bend and take the kids miniature golfing, maybe even rent a powerboat and take us all for a tour of Lake Geneva. We’ll slide past the Wrigley Mansion, if we can find the thing somewhere on the lake’s shores. We’ll go to the movies and let the kids fight over which one we see.
We went to a grocery store in Delavan to buy the provisions we took inside the big-assed cooler that weighs like a dead body to tote around. Erin’s prepared a picnic feast.
But all we have to do now is get heated up enough to go jump in the water before us. I’ve already tested it up to my waist, and it’s cool but not cold. It’s refreshing is what it is.
It takes some convincing, but I cajole my family into entering the water with me. When the kids swim toward the dock to my left, Erin wades out to me. My son and daughter have caught sight of some fellow pre-adolescents, and they’re headed to that dock to buddy up to them.
Erin, however, stays with me in the chest deep waters of Lake Geneva. I take hold of her and draw her to me.
“You’re going to learn to relax, Jimmy, if it kills you and me both,” she smiles hazily.
Chapter 19
Mary O’Connor, 1980
Casey wants me to stay close to home. He says the cops are rousting him and his crew about that Mick O’Brien getting killed, and he says that I should stay out of sight until things cool down. I don’t know why this cop Parisi has to pick out Casey as his target, but he says that they knew each other a little up until high school, and he says that it has something to do with a police artist’s sketch that looked just like him and was connected to the murders of all those girls. He tells me that’s all in the world they have to tie him to those killings, and he says Parisi and Gibron will do whatever they have to in order to set him up for everything.
Figures. The first chance I get for happiness, somebody comes along and tries to snatch it away from me.
I’m going out, anyway, today. Casey has gone to his cousin to see if he can hire on to cut meat at his cousin’s butcher shop. He says our money is getting a little too tight, and he has to find some way not to blow whatever’s left of it. He used to cut meat with his cousin Larry a few years ago, but that was before he got together with his crew.
I’m going over to the old lady’s place to ask her for my birth certificate so I can get Social Security and all other kinds of IDs. I can’t keep walking around as if I just suddenly appeared on this planet, so I have to face her sooner or later, and sooner is better. I can make money, too, without spreading my legs. I’m not stupid. I can do things.
It’s a half hour bus ride over to her apartment in Beverly, on the southwest side. I get off the bus and walk the two blocks to their building. It’s August, and it’s awful hot and steamy, so I’m wearing shorts and a tank top, and I get the wolf whistle from two assholes standing on the corner of my mother’s block.
“Fuck you two micro-dicks,” I tell them, and I flip them the finger. All they can do is laugh.
I get to the building, and I buzz her flat. I’m hoping she’s home but not zonked out by the coke.
The door buzzes and I go inside. Their place is on the second floor. The old lady answers the door.
“I saw you walkin’ down the street. I could hardly believe my eyes.”
She looks sober.
“Yeah. Look at me. Six weeks I been straight. Wish I could say the same for your father. He took off, ten days ago. Maybe he’s dead. I don’t know.”
She closes the door behind us.
“Sit down. I feel privileged that you’ve come calling.”
“You don’t have to get your back up, Ma. I haven’t come to ask you for money.”
“Yeah? Then why’re you here?”
“I need my birth certificate.”
“What the hell for?”
She hasn’t changed much except for her unfrazzled eyes. They’re green. This time they’re clear and relaxed. She’s not hyper, the way she always was when she and the old man were snorting away his track money.
Marion is her name. She used to be fairly pretty, but then the drugs aged both of them. She’s only forty. She looks fifty, even sober. Her hair is strawberry blonde. It’s long and straight, like one of those hippy chicks from the ‘70s. She could have been a groupie for The Grateful Dead or one of those head bands from San Francisco. Now she just appears out of place, in the wrong time zone. Like she never left the last decade and she’s stuck in a different world but has no clue that times have changed.
She’s tall, taller than me, and skinny, sort of, but she has the big boobs, bigger than mine, and she still gets the stares because the rest of her is slim. At least I bet she gets the looks from all the perverts on the street. I haven’t been around in a while.
“I want to get ID so I can get a job, you know?”
“Really?”
“Do you have the birth certificate or not?”
“No.”
I turn and walk to the door.
“Wait a minute. Wait a goddam minute. I haven’t seen or heard from you in a long goddam time and you just pop in and ask me to do something for you. That ain’t right.”
“Do you have it or don’t you?”
“Gimme a minute.”
She turns and walks into the bedroom. She comes back out in a little bit with a piece of paper in her hand.
“You don’t think I’d throw this away, do you?” she says.
Now her eyes are welling up.
“Don’t bother with that. I’m not buying,” I tell her.
“Still the tough little bitch, huh? You were always a snotty little thing.”
“Can I have it?”
She thrusts the document into my hands.
“I’m straight, now. Got a job doing nails at the Evergreen Mall. I don’t drink, and I don’t snort. I’ve been sober going on two months, and I’m never going back. I almost killed myself. Been to AA, and I’m seeing a shrink at County Hospital, too. The AA people say I should apologize to everyone I’ve hurt when I was using. So here it is. I’m sorry, Mary. I’m sorry I let you run out and I’m sorry I didn’t come after you, and if you can’t forgive what I’ve done, I understand.”
She doesn’t look all pitiable. Her fierce green eyes come right at me.
“It isn’t that easy, Ma, forgiving you.”
She nods.
“Where you living?” she asks.
“Got an apartment.”
“Living with a man?”
“Not that it’s any of your business.”
“You’re right, Mary. Sorry, again.”
“Yeah, I’m living with a guy.”
“He good to you?” she asks.
“Yeah. Look, I need to get going. I got a lot of places to go. You know?”
“Okay. Good luck, little girl. You know I always loved you. It was the drugs that—”
“I really have to leave.”
I’m thinking she wants to hug me, but I can’t let her. Like I told her
, it’s way too soon. Who knows if she’ll stay this way.
So I turn and walk out the door.
I take the bus back toward the Social Security building. I walk in and take a number. I have to wait half an hour until they call that number, and then I show the birth certificate, and it only takes about ten minutes to fill out the forms, and then they give me a card. I don’t know why, but my eyes fill up with tears.
“You okay?” the clerk asks on my way out. I smile at her and walk out their doors.
I go to the Department of Vehicles Registration building, and I get myself a state ID. I’m not ready to get a driver’s license because I need to study the Rules of the Road for the written test, and then Casey promised to teach me how to drive. I never did any of that because I was on the streets, but the driver’s license is my next project.
*
I show him my two brand new IDs, and it makes him smile. I don’t think I’ve seen McCaslin smile more than two or three times since we’ve been together, but he’s ear to ear, now.
“See? I am who I said I am. Now you know how old I really am and there’s no lies between us. Now you know I’m not somebody else and that I won’t lie to you, ever again.”
I kiss him, and the kisses start to multiply like those fishes and loaves, and before I know it, we’re on the couch and my shorts and thong are on the floor.
*
Casey McCaslin, 1980
I’m going to have to visit all of them, one at a time. But I can’t be whacking any more of them, right now. There are too many, and I’ll be asking for it if I do any others. Parisi has never let go. He and Gibron show up in my rear view mirror from time to time, and I know they haven’t given up. Word on the street is the FBI is after me, too. They like the headlines with what they call ‘series killers.’ Sometimes the papers call them ‘serial killers.’ Whatever they call them, I can feel the heat. I have to look legitimate so they’ll get off me. They still have no evidence to bring me in for questioning or to get a warrant on me, but I know that every time you put another slug in an empty chamber when you’re playing Russian roulette, the odds go drastically up that there’s a vacancy for you on death row.