Jimmy Parisi Part Two Box Set

by Thomas Laird

I go back outside. It’s still very early on a Sunday morning, and there’s no one on the sidewalks on either side of the street. I haul her out of the backseat, and my luck’s still with me because she’s not struggling or moving around. She must still be out cold. I flip out the carpet on the street. There’s no one coming either way. I flop her onto the rug and then I hurriedly roll her up. It couldn’t have taken more than two minutes. I hoist her to my shoulder once again, and then I take her inside the propped open front door and make my way to my basement flat. I leave her lying inside the carpet by my door, and then I go back and shut the front entry.

  When I get her inside the apartment, I remove her from the rug and then sit her on a chair in the kitchen and strap her securely to that chair with more duct tape. She’s sitting upright and tightly bound to that seat, and she ain’t going anywhere for a long while.

  I go back out and drive the Pontiac about a half mile from my location, and I park it in an alley. It’ll give me hours before they spot it, I’m hoping, and I’m nowhere near it, when I arrive back to the apartment.

  *

  She opens her eyes around ten in the morning. I can’t risk taking the tape off her mouth because in this building I do have neighbors living above me. But I take off the excess tape so that only her wrists and ankles and mouth are bound. Tears start streaming down her eyes, and I don’t give her any comforting speech because there’s none to give.

  I’m going to kill her, but I’m going to take a very long time to do it. Once I’ve finished with her, I’ll steal another new ride and then see if I can wind my way to the North Country, like I planned. I may have to wait a week or two for things to cool off about the roadblocks and all that shit. But once I’m done with Mary, I got nothing to lose. I’ve got the .45, and I’ll blow off the top of my skull before I allow Parisi and Gibron or any other cop to take me. Like I said before, I’m never going back to Joliet or any other shithole like it.

  I show Mary the .45. Her eyes widen, and I cock it. Her face turns a dark pink.

  “I’m going to free up your hands, and if you try to claw me, I’ll blow your fucking face off. These things make a real mess from close up, Mary. So nod if you’re going to be a good girl.”

  She nods. Then I pick her up off the chair and carry her into the bedroom. I toss her on the sheets, onto her back. I slice off the tape that was holding her hands together.

  “Now put your right hand next to the bed post.”

  I stash the .45 down the front of my jeans.

  “If you make a move, I’ll shoot you.”

  She sits still with her right hand next to the post, and I begin strapping her wrist to the bed post. Then I tell her to lie down and reach toward the post on the left side, and I tape her solid to it. Her arms are slightly elevated. Then I undo her ankle duct tape and I fasten her feet and ankles to the posts at the bottom of the bed. She’s spread-eagled, top and bottom. I get out my straight razor and I cut her shirt and bra off. Then I pull down her jeans, and when they’re down by her feet, I slit them off, as well. She’s only wearing her panties, now, and I leave them on her. I like them, anyway. They’re bikini and black, and I remember how aroused I used to get when I took off her clothes and left her bottoms on while I fucked her, back at my old apartment.

  There are more tears streaming down her face, and I bend over and lick them off.

  “Did you fuck that kid, last night, Mary?”

  I pull her hair and shake her head yes.

  “I’ll bet it was the sweetest piece that kid ever had. You like fucking Jews? Gold, right? Must be a Jew. He had a nice looking house. I mean his mommy and daddy did. Maybe I’ll go back and kill him, too, and burn down the fucking place, maybe with mommy and daddy inside along with your kike boyfriend. How does that sound?”

  She tries to pull herself up at me, but she can’t get very far in all that tape. Finally she figures it’s useless, and she settles back.

  “You didn’t know it was me by that bus stop, did you. I just missed grabbing you there. I followed the two uniforms when they took you home, one night….My car was parked two blocks down. I was gonna walk all the way to that Y if I had to, but then I saw you trotting down the street, and I couldn’t believe my luck. You came right to me, instead, except you got on the bus before I could lay hands on you. So I ran back to my ride and I followed you all the way to your sheenee boyfriend’s house. So when I followed you and that bus, I was gonna grab you as soon as you got off, but then the snowplows followed you all the way to the kid’s house. They were coming in both directions on his street. I was gonna bust in, right after you got to the place, but the goddam plows kept coming. And then I closed my eyes while I was parked down his street, and I fell asleep I was so goddam tired. When I woke up, it was about dawn, and I got out of the car and found you just waiting for me at his front door. That’s some kind of good luck for me, ain’t it?”

  She closes her eyes.

  “You’re not, like, resigning yourself to anything, are you, Mary?”

  She opens them and stares at me. I never saw her eyes full of hate for me before, but there they are, blazing into mine.

  “Shit, maybe I’ll let you live. You’re real talented, you are. Maybe you can convince me with all your feminine wiles to let you walk out of her alive. Because I’m thinking right now I’ll bleed you to death, one cut at a time. I won’t do you the way I did all those other girls. I showed them mercy and got it over with, after I had a little fun, first. With you, unless you change my mind, it’s gonna take maybe a couple days. You won’t be recognizable when the cops find you on account of the stink you’ll make.”

  She wets the bed. I’m almost sorry for her. Maybe I should’ve let her use the toilet before I got in here, but it would’ve been too risky. And it doesn’t matter what kind of a mess she makes because I won’t be around long to have to endure it.

  “I’m sorry about that, Mary. You should’ve gone before you left your hebe’s place. I’m not going to cut you, just yet. I want to look at you the way you were when we were together. You remember all that? You did everything with me, so your boyfriend sure ain’t getting a cherry. Hell, you lost that before I knew you, didn’t you.

  “But I think I brought the best out in you. At least the best parts of a cunt, which is what you are. I can’t deny you got me as hard as I’ve ever been. I never had all that much use for twat. I had a pro, now and then, but you were different. Yeah, you were unique or some shit. We could’ve gone on for a long time if all that crap hadn’t gone down.”

  She closes her eyes again. I take the straight razor out of my pocket and I open it, and then I lay the cold steel right down on her flat little tummy with her cute little inny bellybutton. She shivers the way I thought she would.

  “Feels nice when it’s laying flat like that, don’t it?”

  She stares at the blade with popped open eyes.

  I pick the razor up by the handle.

  “It doesn’t take much to change the feeling. When I turn it over to do its business, it don’t take much of a flick to open the skin.”

  I touch her with the sharp side of the blade, just barely against her stomach’s flesh.

  She quivers again, and I hear her muffled scream.

  “You got nothing to screech about, you little bitch. I didn’t even scratch you, yet. It’s going to take a while.”

  She looks like she’s gagging, now. So I rip the tape off her mouth.

  “You yell and I’ll cut your throat right now. Then all hope’ll really be gone.”

  She coughs and coughs, and then it looks like she’s not choking anymore. So I put the tape back over her mouth, again.

  “Girl, you got some stubble on those legs,” I tell her as I stroke her up and down from the ankles to her bush.

  “Maybe I could be of service. It’ll be a dry cut, but it shouldn’t hurt that bad. And I remember how smooth your legs used to be. Can’t have all that rough shit. Don’t move, now, or I might cut you by mistake.�
�

  I scrape her right leg, on the sides and then on the calf, and I can hear her muffled whimpering.

  Then I do her left leg the same way. Both legs are finished, without even a scrape mark. The flesh is a little red, but she hasn’t lost any blood yet.

  “I suppose you think I’m going to take advantage of you, huh, Mary? I mean the way you’re all strapped up and everything, you don’t have much of an alternative but to lay back and enjoy it. You really used to, didn’t you? All that howling and bucking and sweating. You were really into it.

  “But you know what? I’m really fucking hungry. You’re gonna have to rest up for the next act until I get something to eat. And I might just take a short nap on the couch out there. You won’t go anywhere, will you? No? That’s good.”

  I get up and go into the kitchenette and open the refrigerator, and all that’s left in there is a quart of Coke, a loaf of white bread, and a jar of peanut butter. So I make a sandwich and I drink the Coke out of the bottle, and then I go in the john and take a leisurely dump. Next I decide to take a shower in there, and then I towel off, and last I shave. I don’t want to rough up her face before I intend to.

  Then I go out to the living room dressed in clean underwear that I rooted out of the dresser in the bedroom. She was watching me while I was back in there with eyes the size of saucers. I went out into the living room again and laid my tired ass on the three-seater and tossed that blanket she was in over me. I propped up the pillow beneath my head, and before I could blink I was out like a fucking light.

  When I woke up, the sun was at a different angle. I thought it must be late afternoon. I looked out the window and saw that some of the snow was melting, and you could make out the black on the street where it had been covered with white yesterday.

  I went into the bedroom and checked on her. She looked like she was asleep. She couldn’t be dead because I saw her tits rising and falling. I wanted to go in and mount her the way I used to, but I thought I’d save that until right before we got into the final stage, the one where I made her bleed.

  The peanut butter didn’t fill me, and I was hungry again, and I thought about going to the grocery market thing run by the Mexican guy, about three blocks from here, so I got dressed and went out and walked the still-covered sidewalks to the store. I bought some stuff I could fry up fast because time was really getting short, and I couldn’t drag this stuff out much longer with that twat.

  I grab the small bag of groceries, and I head back toward the apartment. There are a few people out today because the sun’s out, but it’s getting colder since the snow blew out. Now it’s supposed to go down to zero tonight, the Mexican behind the register told me.

  The cold is not good news if I’m getting onto that highway in the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours, which is my plan. It’s fucking January, so I should have expected the big freeze.

  When I get back, I step inside the bedroom, and I check to make sure the tape’s holding strong. You don’t struggle your way out of that shit. You’d need a knife or a scissors to cut your way free. She’s still where I left her, but there’s a bigger puddle beneath her, and it stinks of strong piss, so I take out a new sheet and pull the soiled one out from underneath her.

  “We aims to please,” I smile at her.

  I throw the wetted sheet in the hamper in the john. The laundry won’t get done, this week, I tell myself. I’ll be halfway to Canada when Mary and the laundry basket will both smell like death.

  The kid, Barry, must have called the cops. They’ll be out in force trying to find that old Poncho. But when they do, they’ll be in the wrong neighborhood. They’ll extend the search, sure, but I’m like the needle in that fucking haystack. This is a dense barrio. There are hundreds of buildings and thousands of tenants to weed through. It’ll take time, and time is my friend. Everybody gets tired of chasing someone or something, after a while. I’ve got endurance. And they’re chasing a nobody, which is Mary O’Connor. She’s an ex-street whore and nothing more. If this were some lily white girl from the suburbs whose daddy was connected, they’d look in every fucking cranny. But she’s a runaway. Like the other ones. The only reason I got the heat was because there was a bunch of them. But what difference does just one more make?

  Like the jailhouse lawyers from Joliet will tell you, they can only give you life or an execution, no matter how you cut it. So she don’t matter, and they’ll quit when they come up empty on the car. They’ll comb the neighborhood, but by the time they get to this door, I’ll be headed north.

  I don’t feel like looking at her, now. I have to give myself a little time before I go back in there and tie up all those loose ends.

  What’ll I do when I get up there, in Canada? They got stuff to steal. Maybe I can join another crew. I’ll have to start small because every place has its politics, and I’ll be starting fresh. I was the boss here because it was natural that I’d lead. I always was smarter than those assholes, and they knew it, so I got unofficially elected to be the chief. Up there, I won’t know anybody right away, but I’m sure they’ll recognize talent when they see it.

  Will I start up with more body bags in the fucking Yukon? I don’t know. It’s like a disease that’s got no remedy. When I met her, I thought I could stop, but now I’ll be making her a name on Parisi’s list, and maybe the list doesn’t have a number attached to it, yet.

  She’s the last number on my list in this country, anyway, so there’s something final about her.

  I should’ve known it wasn’t love. It was too easy to let myself think I loved anybody, let alone this street cunt. They’re all alike, when it comes down to it. They all think with their pussies. They want you to think they’re more important than that, but at the end of the day it’s what you can do for them. She thought she got a better deal from this Gold kid, and maybe she did, but her deal with the Jew would’ve gone south, just like it did with us. There’s no such thing as permanent, there’s no such thing as forever. Nobody lives long and people don’t stick to you forever because there’s no forever.

  There’s only the next big thing, the next big deal. And then you move on until you can’t move on at all.

  Chapter 34

  Jimmy Parisi, 1981

  The call comes through from Barry Gold at 6:12 A.M. I’m at home asleep when Erin wakes me up and hands me the receiver. I tell Doc, two minutes later, to haul his ass down to Headquarters, and then I shower and dress in a rush and head to the car.

  I’m downtown in thirty minutes, and Doc’s in my office waiting for me.

  “How the hell did she slip past our guys at the Y?” I ask.

  “They got distracted by two skirts.”

  “So how did she get all the way to Oak Lawn right after a snow storm? Tell me she took the bus.”

  Doc smiles.

  “So all right. She got there and walked right into McCaslin while she was trying to pick up the newspaper from Barry’s front door. Is that what the kid said?”

  “Yeah. His mother and father were stuck out of town, and she must’ve got all itchy to consummate the relationship. Whatever, he’s got her. Now what’ll we do?”

  I look out at the sun drenched, snow-covered beach beyond the glass of my window.

  “He can’t be hauling her around in a car. It’s too goddam cold, and we’ve got an all points for that ride. Right?”

  Doc nods.

  “The kid got his plates and the make, and they’ll find the ride soon. There isn’t much traffic because not all the neighborhoods have been plowed, and it’s Sunday. We have that going for us, at least.”

  “He has to have a place to bring her. Unless he’s killed her, already.”

  Doc’s face turns morose, dark.

  “I don’t think he’s done her, yet. I think he wants to play with her a while. Get his money’s worth. He knows we’ll have him soon enough. He might think he’s got an escape plan, but he’s smart enough to know running is a very bad idea. He’s still here. He will be unt
il he does whatever he figures on doing to Mary.”

  “Where’s he going to get a place, Jimmy? Everybody in the county has seen his face. They’re not going to house that cocksucker, not with his famous mug plastered all over the media, they aren’t.”

  I look at the glaring white reflection off Lake Michigan.

  “Who’s been helping him, so far? Who’s been helping him all along?”

  “His fucking cousin. The butcher.”

  *

  We check on the cousin and find out that he’s got real estate beyond the meat operation plant. He owns three apartment buildings on the southside. We find his address and Doc and I haul it over to his place on 87th and Bishop.

  He lives in a mixed neighborhood. It’s black and white, fifty-fifty. The blockbusters haven’t completed the job here, yet. They’re a bunch of stubborn Micks and Poles, along with blacks, in this ‘hood.

  It’s only 8:12 in the morning, so he doesn’t answer his doorbell very promptly, so Doc takes out his sap and pounds a few lumps into his front door. The cousin lives in a bungalow, like most of the other residents of this block.

  Finally he opens the front door, and when he sees the dents Doc has made, his face colors a deep red.

  “The fuck is this?” he bellows.

  Doc steps up close, into his face.

  “Get dressed. Or do you want to go for a ride like you are?”

  This particular McCaslin doesn’t seem to want to argue with my partner. He retreats back into his home and then re-emerges in about five minutes. We escort him to the car, and then we head back the way we came.

  We have him in the interview room, and Doc throws a telephone book onto the table. Cousin McCaslin is apparently aware what the phone book is for.

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “It’ll be an hour or two before he arrives, asshole,” Doc tells him. “and we haven’t got the time. If you don’t tell us where that motherfucker is right now, you’ll be a candidate for accessory to murder. Aiding and abetting are already givens. But if you tell us right now where he is, in which one of those three gopher holes you own, then the judge might have some mercy on your sad ass. If you sit here and stonewall us, I’ll make it my personal mission to see the judge gives you absolutely no quarter. You will go to prison.”