by Thomas Laird
“So Tommy has to pay.”
I stand up and reach over to him with my hand. He raises his, and we shake.
“Goodbye, Greenberg. I won’t be coming around anymore. Really. Not this time.”
I walk to his door and I leave. It’s still dark out here, and I don’t see any heads in the parked cars on the street, and I go walking to that bus stop for the last time.
*
I buy a used beater from a fly-by-night used car guy not far from the room where I’m staying. It costs $800, and it’s a non-descript Chevy that some factory worker would use as a ride, or maybe a high school kid might buy it if he couldn’t afford a muscle car. It supposedly has only 52,000 miles on it, but I know the slimy snake with the pencil-thin mustache who’s selling it to me has jerked back the actual tally, probably by half. The tread is low, but I figure it’ll go for another two thousand miles before it blows.
I drive out of San Fran on a bright, warm day in early March. I’m hoping the ice and snow they’ve been getting in the Midwest is over with. I read in the papers that it’s been in the mid-forties in Chicago, and they figure that it’s a heat wave for that territory.
I’m just out of California when I pull off at a rest stop to get gas and something to eat. I have the biggest bulk of my 80K in my duffel bag along with my piece and my underwear and a spare pair of jeans and a couple of clean shirts and a few pairs of white socks. I have the black leather shoes from the hit on the penthouse, but that’s my stock in total. Not more than the shirt on my back, actually.
The beard is gone and the stubble on top is starting to grow out in my natural brown color. I’m back to the face I’ve been carrying around before I did all the makeover. Hell with it. I don’t care if I get spotted along the way. If it’s going to come now, then let it. If they let me pass, then I’ll kill Tommy and Steven and anyone else who gets in the way. It feels almost liberating not to care if you keep on breathing in the near future. Life seems almost sweeter this way, not giving a shit what goes down from one moment to the next. Tommy will die anyway, and guys like him don’t get old too often, unless they rot in a cell.
Steven was like the rest of us. It wasn’t healthy to be too jealous of your life in our line of work. You couldn’t be too afraid to die because the chances of survival were always minimal for trained killers. He knows I’m still out there. He couldn’t help but know with all the coverage of me and the five guys I took out so far.
When I sit in the café at the edge of Interstate 80, I pick up a San Francisco paper, and there’s an article on page four about the five ex-Rangers I fought with and it was about their burials in Arlington. It says all five were planted there.
I can’t imagine they’re saving a plot for me, seeing that I murdered the lot of them. And maybe there’ll be one more grave to dig in Virginia. They’re all heroes, according to the paper. There has still never been anything in the media about that hamlet in Quang Tri, that little patch of straw hootches that we blew to hell, along with a bunch of bystanders who never deserved what we gave them.
I’ve tried to tell myself a thousand times that I never pulled the trigger on any of them, but it’s a sin of omission. My sin is doing nothing to stop the other six from blowing all of them away. It was a sin of commission, too. I could’ve done something.
It was pretty similar to the way Li died, with our child. It could’ve been me out front instead of her. Willy might not have done her if he’d got me first, but if she saw him, she would’ve gone down anyway. Knowing that Willy would kill any witnesses doesn’t make me feel any better.
The waitress comes over and gives me another dose of their overly weak coffee. She looks at me carefully, and I start to think she might have recognized me, but when I leave her a five-dollar tip, she smiles at me like I’m her long-lost bosom buddy.
*
I’m into Nevada when I see the hitchhiker on the side of I-80, ahead of me on the right. I slow down, even though I shouldn’t, but it’s so goddam boring to be alone on the ride east, and I can’t stand to listen to the radio anymore.
“Where you headed?” I ask her from the driver’s side. The windows are still opened because it’s in the upper sixties in Nevada.
“You aren’t some serial nut, are you?” She smiles.
She’s a true redhead, with the freckles to complete her tomboy appearance. She’s wearing ragged jeans, a rainbow-colored sleeveless jersey, and she’s got a guitar case strapped over her shoulder. In her left hand she carries a giant duffel. It’s khaki and twice the size of the one I’m carrying in the trunk.
I get out of the car and open that trunk and tell her to put her stuff inside.
“You’re not one of those crazies in the movies who murders hitchers?”
“I just kill little old ladies for their money. You’re too young and too broke for me to kill.”
We’re standing out in a blazing afternoon sun, cars and trucks roaring past us at well above the speed limit of 70.
“We need to get going,” I tell her. “Where you headed? You never answered me.”
“I’m headed to New York,” she replies.
“City?”
She nods.
“You going to become a singer, some kind of rock star?”
“I sing country rock.” She laughs. “I act, too.”
We get back in the Chevy, and I start it up.
“You have a name?” I ask as I pull out onto the highway.
I have to floor it so we don’t get mutilated from behind by some speeder who’s got it in three digits.
“Robin,” she says.
“My name is Matt Carson.”
“Glad to know you.”
“I can take you as far as Gary, Indiana. Is that all right?”
“That’s two thousand miles closer to New York, so I guess so.”
“I wish I could take you all the way, but I have business in Gary.”
I’m not going to tell her about Chicago because she might suddenly get the flash that I’m the guy the cops all over the country are looking for.
“You mind if I ask you how old you are?” I query.
“I’m twenty-one,” Robin says.
“You look more like seventeen.”
“It’s the red hair and the freckles. I still get carded all the time.”
“I had someone close to me who was just about as old as you are.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died.”
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s all right. That’s over with now.”
“Were you in love?” She grins.
“Yeah. You could say that.”
“I hope someone else comes along. How old are you?”
“Old enough to be your young uncle.”
She smiles at me again. I’m glad I picked her up. This beats all the golden oldie stations I was hearing from the Bay just before Robin got in.
“We’re going to have to stop at a motel before we get to Gary. It’s too long a stretch to drive through,” I explain.
“I can afford one night, I suppose.”
“How ‘bout it’s on me?”
“You mean separate rooms, right?”
“Of course. I’m not a rapist, either.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“If you hadn’t asked about the accommodations, I would’ve been very surprised.”
“You don’t even know me. Why are you being so generous?”
“I’ve got money and I haven’t got anything to do with all of it.”
“You some kind of strange philanthropist, Matt?” She grins.
“Not hardly. I used to be a contract worker.”
“What’re you planning on doing?”
She reminds me of Li, although they hardly look anything alike.
“Finishing an old job. Loose strings, you know?”
“I guess I understand.”
*
We drive almost five hundred
miles east, and I’m not sure which state we’re in, but there’s a sign for a Holiday Inn up ahead, so when we get to the turnoff, I pull off I-80. I park the $800 beater in a space not far from the entrance.
I open the trunk and she reaches in for her duffel. I leave my own luggage in there. I figure it’s safer here than in the room because this car’s such a piece of shit that it won’t attract any booster.
“Don’t you want to bring your bag?” she asks as I shut the trunk.
“I’m too tired to haul it. I’ll come out in the morning and get some clean clothes. I got nothing to steal back here anyway.”
I will come back for the .22 after she’s checked into her room.
“Look, Matt, it doesn’t make any sense to pay for two rooms. I trust you as a gentleman. I can sleep on a couch or on the floor.”
“You can have the bed. The couch sounds good to me. In fact I’d prefer it. You sure you don’t want your own room?”
“It’s settled, like I said.”
“Then I’ll buy dinner.”
*
We go to their restaurant because I don’t want to have to be out in public any more than I have to. Even though I’m resigned to take what arrives, I don’t want to press it. I still want to kill Tommy, but my feelings about finishing Steven, however, have waned a little. Maybe it’d be enough to kill Costello, and then I might make a run to Mexico or Canada.
And who knows? Maybe I’ll catch up with Robin and take her all the way to The Apple. Maybe this diminutive, red-headed, freckled waif of a girl has changed my luck altogether.
But Costello still needs killing, and all the rest is just a pleasant, passing dream.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Chicago, 1985
Word comes from San Francisco that Tommy Costello is on his way to our fair city, and it also means that Azrael is coming right after him. Two birds and one .22 bullet apiece for Costello and Steven James. The good news is that this thing is no longer scattered all over the place. Evan Azrael is bringing his act to town, and he’s finally at a disadvantage—this is my territory and not his.
Doc and I have a web of informers throughout the north and south sides, and now we’re pulling all their strings and letting them know that we need to get a sighting of Azrael, and we provide all of our snitches with sketches of the various appearances that the ex-Ranger might assume. We’re able to scrounge some money from our Captain’s piggy bank, and it comes to fifty bucks a head for each of our sources. There’s a promise for another two hundred for the PI if he gives us a location and an arrest. Most of our street informers are users or alcoholics, so two bills will keep them happy for a while. We shouldn’t be aiding and abetting career drug users, but that’s the kind of street dick you have to deal with if you want eyeballs on the street corners.
Doc and I are becoming rather fond of the new Steven James. He’s engaged to his lady friend from the VA rehab now, and he’s enrolled and currently a member of the Police Academy. He seems to have turned himself around about 180 degrees, and Doc and I are pulling for him to leave whatever baggage he still has for that botched-up war in Vietnam behind him. It ruined Evan Azrael, and Azrael could still be gunning for Steven and not just the mob trash who ordered the hit on him that turned into a double homicide in which a woman and the life inside her got terminated.
The other intelligence factor is my family, the Parisis. I’m not proud of the branches in our heritage tree because the limbs include the local version of La Cosa Nostra—in Chicago they call themselves the Outfit, and some still believe they were the crew who pulled the whack on JFK, regardless of what the Warren Report said. They don’t use the ‘M’ word (mafia) in this burg, but they’re all the same breed of skunk. The Parisis were unfortunate enough, some of us, to take the wrong turn on the highway, and there are a few cousins of mine who are career criminals like Tommy Costello and his crew.
When people see my surname, they usually assume I’m one of them, even though I’m a policeman. I don’t bother correcting their assumptions because I can’t stop them from thinking we’re all extras from The Godfather movies. I like the goddam movies myself, but I feel guilty as hell about admiring Coppola’s epics about the brethren from the East Coast.
I visit my cousins when I think there are no other avenues to travel, and this Azrael thing has gotten out of hand. The Ranger started his mini version of the Gunfight at the OK Corral in San Francisco, and now he’s relocating here, or I imagine he has designs to continue the street brawl with at least Tommy Costello. Doc and I figure that Steven James is on the backburner as far as Tommy is concerned, but we’ve got surveillance on Steven twenty-four seven. There won’t be any final tally for Azrael on James, Doc and I insist, and our Captain has secured funds to keep James and his fiancée under guard day and night.
But the fastest way to find Azrael is to find Costello, and I have to draw on a few favors from the crooked side of my clan in order to find Tommy before Azrael does.
My intelligence says Pete Parisi is the most likely candidate to be harboring the San Francisco don. So I arrange a meet with my cousin Pietro on his turf, in his territory. These greaseballs all love to hang at clubs or restaurants or the universal Italian–American clubs that they frequent, but Pete likes titty bars because he owns a string of them, and everyone knows it isn’t just for the bouncing breasts that patrons show up in his establishments. Most of the “dancers” double as prostitutes in the backrooms, and Pete pays well to have vice look the other way for his “exotic” dancer bars—if you can call blowjobs exotic anymore.
He says he’ll see me, but he doesn’t sound happy, over the phone. I don’t care if it pleases him, so we make the meet for four this afternoon, early in March, on a blustery wet day with rain coming down in a drizzle. The only good news about the weather is that it’s supposed to stay above freezing.
Doc has declined to come with me because he knows Pete won’t relax or drop his guard if there’s another cop, especially an “Anglo” cop, in his presence. With me, I’m just the cousin who took a turn in the other direction, but I’m still familia, and I’ll use whatever it takes to locate Tommy Costello.
When I walk in the door of Bet Your Bippy’s on 112th and Harlem, the dimness of the light makes me squint until my eyes adjust to this bat cave of bouncing boobs, but there aren’t many dancers in action because the bar-strip joint is at its least busy hours. Things won’t perk up until nine or ten, when the vampires and the night walkers populate dives like this. The booze is watered down and the prices are obscene, but if you want flesh, you pay to see it. The prices in the back rooms, I hear, are exorbitant, also.
Pete waits for me at a booth far removed from the stage area where three older-looking divas are trying to look enthused about making pendulums out of their mammaries. They look pretty sad, at least from what I can make out on their faces. They’re twirling around their poles, and there are maybe ten patrons in the joint.
“Sit down,” he commands.
I smile at him. “Happy to see you, too, Pete.”
“You’re never here socially, so why don’t we just get to it.”
I sit down in the booth across from him.
He’s a handsome man, taller than most Italians, perhaps six-two, and he’s what the ladies would call attractive, maybe even a “stud.” His sexual prowess is legendary with his crew and with his associates, and even the Parisi clan knows that his lust is insatiable. He has a wife, and she always looked very bedraggled whenever I saw her at family funerals or weddings, which were unavoidable even though we knew these people were gangsters. Blood truly is thicker than water with the goombahs.
“You don’t want to play nice?” I smile.
“Is this an interview or an ambush?”
“I seek the white whale,” I grin.
“The hell does that mean?”
I have to laugh out loud, and his cheeks turn crimson, and he usually doesn’t show his emotions overtly, so I feel I have a slight advanta
ge over him.
“You know who I’m looking for.”
“Who’s that, Jimmy?” He smiles back.
“Tommy Costello.”
“Never heard of him.” He keeps grinning. “You’re probably referring to that Italian guy from the West Coast, no?”
“I know you’re keeping him under your protection. I know how far your business interests extend.”
“You know a lot about me, but I don’t know much about you, Cousin, except that we share the same blood, and the way you turned out is a mystery to all of us. How much they pay you?”
“My salary is public. Look it up.”
“I mean the salary you don’t claim with the IRS.”
I smile at him again. “I don’t take money.”
“Then you’re dumber than you look… I don’t know anything about Costello or his whereabouts. If I did, I wouldn’t be talking about it with you, Cousin.”
“You do know what obstruction means, no?”
“Jimmy, please. What else you want to know?”
“You’re going to get bloody with him in your yard, Pete. This guy Azrael is a very highly trained killer. He doesn’t miss. He popped those five soldiers who were all the same caliber he was. These guys were professional hitmen. Does that put it in terms you can understand?”
“I don’t like it when you get up on a pulpit, Detective. Save it for the Sunday morning slobs because I ain’t buying.”
“You think he’d avoid putting one in your melon if you were standing a little too close to Costello? He’s got nothing to lose. He tried to hit Tommy in his penthouse in Frisco, and he waded through two of his best killers to do it, and if Tommy had been there he would’ve got tossed off the thirty-second floor. This guy is really good, Pete. I’m not messing with you. I’m telling you. There’ve been enough murders. Costello deserves what this ex-Ranger wants to hand him, but it isn’t going to happen on my watch. And because you’re family, consider this a courtesy visit. I wouldn’t become too cocky about this soldier’s chances of getting up close and personal with your asses. He has a habit of getting to and killing his targets. He killed a lot better gunmen than you have on the payroll, Pete.”