by Thomas Laird
“My name is Diana,” she smiles. “Are you married?”
I shake my head and grin. The next move seems to be for my zipper, but she doesn’t head in that direction.
“There’s no smoking inside. You have to light up outside in the street or in the yard behind the building. You can smoke out back or you can barbeque, if you have the mind to.”
“I don’t smoke,” I tell her.
“I quit two years ago, and I can’t stand the smell. You have a job?”
“Yes. I’m a personal contractor. Construction.”
“You work all alone?”
“No. My crew lives back in the city. I wanted to move out where the air’s a little clearer. You know, where it’s more restful.”
She smiles at me curiously.
“Have a girlfriend?”
“Not at the moment,” I say, and her face brightens.
“You can have ladies over, but no big parties, if you know what I mean.”
“I live pretty quietly.”
She begins to study my face.
“I’ve seen you somewhere before,” she muses.
“Not likely,” I respond. “I only came back to Chicago after being in the Army. I was there for seven years after I got out of the service.”
“Were you in that war?”
She gestures for me to sit on the beige-colored couch finally.
“I was in Vietnam for a while, yes.”
“Win any medals?” She grins.
“Some. I don’t know where they are now, so I can’t show them to you.”
“You still look familiar. Oh, I know who you look like!”
I’m thinking about asking for my money back. I’d hate to have to kill her. It’d be a waste of choice, aged flesh.
“You look like that actor—Roy Scheider—except you’re younger.”
“No one ever said that before. I don’t think I resemble anyone, much. I’m sort of anonymous looking.” I try to smile at Diana.
“No. You’re not anonymous. Maybe you don’t much look like the guy from The French Connection after all. But you are kinda cute.”
“Is it okay if I move in right away?”
“Sure. I just cleaned the apartment up two days ago. It’s ready to move into.”
I get up from the couch.
“Don’t let yourself be a stranger. You know where I live,” she says, and reaches out to take my hand.
She holds on a little too long, and I’m wondering if she wants me to do more than hold her hand, but it’s not the time to get close enough to anyone to allow them to get used to my face.
“I’m sure we might have a beer or a drink sometime soon, but I have to get my stuff upstairs.”
Her face descends just a little, as if I’ve disappointed her.
“You seeing anyone? I noticed you don’t have a ring on,” I tell her.
“The old man died, two years ago.”
“I can’t believe no one has latched on to you yet.” I smile as warmly as I can.
“Young guys like you wouldn’t be interested, that’s for sure. You must have girls all over you.”
“I had someone once. But not now. I’ll see you soon, Diana, I hope.”
“Like I said, I’m not going anywhere.”
I make my exit, go out to the Ford and get my duffel with the money and my smaller bag with the pistol and the ammunition, and I use the key she gave me when I get up to the third floor.
It’s furnished, as advertised. There isn’t much up here, but there’s a bed in the bedroom. (I’ll have to buy sheets and a blanket.) There’s a couch in the front room and a recliner chair. There’s no TV, but I’m not interested in television. There’s a refrigerator and a stove and a kitchen table and two chairs in the tiny nook that’s the kitchen.
It’ll do. It’s all more temporary than Diana knows, but it’ll house me until I can get past the cops and the Italian crew to kill Tommy Costello. I’m not likely to be around to meet up with Steven James, as I said, but if I can get within a gunshot of Costello, I’ll make that single round count. Whatever happens after that, I really don’t give a damn.
*
Why I feel it’s necessary to head to Wisconsin, I’m not sure, but I know where my father lives, and it’ll likely be my last chance to see him. So I head north on the Tri-State, and two hours later I’m there. He’s lived here for a while, now. He moved to Wisconsin a little while after my mother passed.
There’s a chance that the cops might be watching the old man’s place, but I don’t think so because they probably know by now that the two of us are not tight, never have been, which brings back the question of why I’m coming here to see him.
It feels like a debt I owe, but I’m not sure I owe it to Earl. Maybe it’s my mother I owe it to, making things right before I’m dead. But I know he’s likely very ashamed of me, and there’ll be no explanation that’ll assuage him of his disgust for what I did to those five soldiers that I shot.
Who I executed, I mean. Because they were executions. Someone had to make it right, about Dia Nguc. There was no military justice, no court marshal. Those villagers just got shot and were left for the wild pigs and the tigers and all the other creatures of the jungle and the rainforest. They cleaned their bones, and no relatives of those Vietnamese received their relics so that they could be properly mourned.
I ring his bell, and he answers after a few moments.
He doesn’t say anything when he sees me, but he opens the door wider and lets me in. I follow him to the kitchen.
“I should call you in,” he says. “You carrying?”
I shake my head.
“You mean you didn’t come here to bump me off, too?”
“I killed the five of them for what we did in the war. I didn’t pull the trigger with them there, but I’m guilty as hell. I’m not going to apologize. They deserved to die, and so do I, but I’ve got one more thing to do. At least one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“This guy, this gangster, Tommy Costello, killed a woman. I was with her. And she was carrying a kid. Mine. Your grandchild.”
His face goes gray. It’s as if I’ve genuinely surprised him.
“So you came here to hide out?” he wants to know.
“No. I’ve got a place… Somewhere back in Illinois. I’m trying to wait for that Italian lover to come out of his hole, but he’s protected by another Outfit soldier.”
“You need a new plan. The old one is nuts,” Earl says.
“I know.”
“You were always a strange kid, Evan, but I never thought you had it in you to become a killer.”
“That’s what the Army’s for, killing, isn’t it?”
“The Army and the Marines and everybody else teaches you how to defend the country, and when you’re in uniform, it’s self-defense.”
“Maybe in your war, Pa, but not in mine.”
“You don’t get all these goddam choices, Evan. You have to trust somebody.”
“Well, I didn’t come here to go back and forth with you. That’s always been a losing proposition. It must be comforting to know you’re always right.”
I stand up from my chair at the kitchen table. He goes to the fridge and takes out two Coors.
“Sit down,” he commands, and I find myself obeying.
He hands me the can of beer.
I pop the top and take a drink. All that driving has made me thirsty.
“I was going to be a grandfather,” he says as he sits back down. “Who was she?”
“She was a Vietnamese. One of the boat people who came to California in the late seventies. I found her on the street and took her in. It was only supposed to be until she found a job and then moved on by herself, but it … didn’t work out that way.”
“You mean you fell in love.”
I look at him, and I see those piercing hazel eyes that always got the best of me in any staredown I ever attempted. He always won. Always.
“I
take it you never got married.”
“I didn’t know she was pregnant, at first. That happened later. And then Willy Costello found us in a cabin in a remote place in New York, and he shot her instead of me, so the baby died with her. Then I killed Tommy Costello’s brother, and here we are.”
“And you killed those five ex-Rangers.”
“I killed a hell of a lot more people, too. I was on contract with Costello’s crew. I was an associate, so I’m a gangster, I suppose.”
“Why don’t you turn yourself in?”
“I’m not going to live in a cage. I’m not going to prison.”
“Maybe you could get a good lawyer, someone who could prove you were—”
“Insane? Is that what you think I am, Pa?”
“I think you’re sick, yes.”
“Maybe you’re right. But a hospital is just a prettier cage. No thanks, I’m not copping to insanity. I knew what I was doing, every time I pulled the trigger, and none of them were innocent little flowers of the field.”
He takes another pull at his can of Coors.
“You thinking about making a phone call?” I ask him.
“I’m not going to dime you, no. You’re blood. I can’t do that.”
He takes another drink from the brew.
“So what’s next?” he asks.
“I try to stay free until I can find Costello out in the open.”
“How long, do you figure?” he asks.
“Tommy doesn’t like holing up. His ego’s too big to stay hidden, and it’ll make him look weak to the other boys who want his throne. No, he’ll be coming out shortly. He’s banking on the Chicago cops nailing me before too long.”
“He might be right in his thinking,” he offers.
“He probably is right, Pa. But I’m not going to make it easy on him. I’ll stick it out until that Chicago cop whose cousin Tommy’s staying with nabs me or until I get one clear pop at that miserable son of a bitch.”
He holds the beer can and wipes the sweat from the aluminum.
“I won’t call you in, Evan.”
I look over at those strangely colored eyes. They’re not exactly duplicates of each other.
“They’re going to kill you. They’re not going to put you in prison, no. I know you won’t let them put you away, and I think I’d rather see you dead than behind bars. You better get the hell out of here, now. I’ve got nothing left to say to you, Evan. Go on. Go.”
I leave the barely touched Coors on his kitchen tabletop. I don’t look him in the eyes again, and I turn and walk out his front door.
I stop only once on the way back to Orland Park, and that’s to put gas in the Ford. I buy a bottle of Coke from the machine outside the john’s door, and then I get in the Fairlane and I head south on the highway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Chicago, 1985
The kids are busy with school, and Maria continues to watch them when I can’t be there, and my life goes on with work. And there’s nothing much else than work. I haven’t seen or heard from Rita in two weeks, and it’s becoming more evident that we’re done.
I love my children, but there really is something elemental missing from my life, and it’s a woman, of course. You take for granted what you have until you lose it, and I suppose I’m like the rest of the population that way.
I’ve been tempted to reach out to her, but I can’t pull the trigger as far as the phone is concerned, and I could walk into her office and see her directly, but I can never motivate myself to take those few steps down the hall.
Worse yet, Azrael has seemed to vanish only a few days after the security man, Marquand, made the sighting in front of Pete’s palace. We have plenty of eyes on the street looking for him. His various renditions and photos are inside every squad car in the city and in the cop rides in the ‘burbs, too. There hasn’t been a glimmer, nothing.
He might have decided it was too tight in Chicago, and maybe he’s bright enough to know when he’s outmanned. But the lingering doubt of Azrael’s withdrawal is that he lost someone of his own, and the Asian girl was with child. If it were me, I’d never let go of Tommy Costello. A jail cell wouldn’t protect him from me if he’d killed Erin or my kids. Then my badge would come off, and I’d likely devote the rest of my life to whacking Tommy Costello, and I think that’s the way this ex-Ranger operates. There are no rules of engagement, any longer, with him. He left the Geneva Convention behind him in the rainforests over a decade ago.
The only theory I can come up with is that he’s waiting us out, trying to make Costello’s goons and the city cops lower their guards, and if he waits long enough he’s likely to get his shot at the San Francisco don. From what I was told by the Frisco Homicide detectives over the phone a few days ago, Costello is not the stay at home type. He likes to go to clubs, he enjoys young (sometimes very young) women, and he likes to go to hockey games, boxing matches, and baseball games.
The Hawks are not in the playoff picture, I haven’t read an advertisement or seen one on TV for any prime fights coming to town, but the baseball season opens in Wrigley on April 15th, two weeks from today, April Fool’s Day. If Tommy’s still in town, I’m thinking he’ll have to get out to Wrigley Field on opening day because the Cubs are playing the San Francisco Giants, Tommy’s team. The Frisco copper told me Costello has season’s boxes in the Bay and that Tommy never misses a home game—unless he’s out eviscerating someone who owes him money.
Tommy Costello should be a little stir crazy by now, wherever he’s lurking, and I presume, and Doc concurs, that he’s in one of Cousin Pete’s properties. It’s not likely that we’ll be allowed search warrants for everything Pete Parisi holds title to, so we have to wait for Costello to emerge like the Groundhog—but whose name doesn’t happen to be Pete. It’s Phil.
We have to keep looking even if the scent of Evan Azrael is absolutely gone and even if the Mafia don from the West Coast has gone underground as well. There is still continual surveillance on Steven James, and there will be if I have any say in it until we locate the ex-Ranger. Azrael has had enough blood, and he’s killed twice in my territory, and I’m not all right with the idea that he can operate at will in Chicago.
So Doc and I decide to start squeezing our informants.
The most likely starting spot is with Pauly Terrio. He’s a bottom feeder who runs numbers and traffics with stolen property, mostly booze and cigarettes. He isn’t big time enough to earn his spurs with the Outfit, but he’s privy to all kinds of street talk that cops aren’t allowed to join in on. Pauly is a grimy bastard, but we’ve found him useful, and so we’ve kept him out of jail so that we can tap him now and then and then threaten him from time to time to be our ears in the hood. He knows the south side, and he knows Pete’s people, and my cousin’s crew doesn’t give him credit for having the balls to rat on his own kind. It’s like the Indians were, around crazy people. They left them alone.
We find him selling cigarettes out of his trunk on 22nd and Damen.
“You’re a little out of your territory, no?” Doc asks him out of the window of our Crown Vic unmarked ride.
His face descends, and his three customers take off running down the alley where we found him.
“Shit, Doc. Jimmy, why’re you into my business? This ain’t your area of expertise.”
He’s about an inch under six feet tall, he’s skinny, maybe 145 pounds, and he looks like he’s wearing the clothes he wore back in high school, without an occasional change. He sports a ripe odor whenever we’re in his vicinity.
“Get in the car,” I call over to him.
He slumps and pouts like a teenager, too, and I know why the Outfit thinks he might in fact be marginally retarded. But he gets in, and I pull us out of the alley onto 22nd Street.
“This is bad for business,” he grumbles in the backseat.
“You’re lucky you aren’t on relief, asshole.” Doc laughs at him from the front passenger’s side.
“Where the hell a
re we goin’?” he moans after about twenty minutes of heading east on the Eisenhower.
When we arrive at the Oak Street Beach on the near north side of Lakeshore Drive, we pull into a parking lot. We can see people walking on the sand in front of us, but there are no foolish swimmers out in the water yet. It’s still the first of April, and the shock of the Arctic temperature of the Lake water could cause a healthy person to have a stroke or a heart attack. The temperature in the drink is about 43, I read the other day in the Tribune.
“Let’s go for a walk, Pauly,” I tell him.
Doc stays in the car because the sand would be rough on his already shaky knee.
When we take a few paces toward the water, Terrio stops abruptly.
“You ain’t planning on throwing me in the Lake, are you, Jimmy?”
I have to laugh at this idiot.
“C’mon, moron,” I tell him.
So he catches up to me and we head north on the cold sand. The water is iron-gray, and the surf is choppy.
“We want to know where Tommy Costello is,” I tell Pauly.
“Who is he?”
I stop and look right at him. I can smell him even with all the fresh air out here. He stinks of cigarette smoke and body odor. No wonder he can’t get laid.
“You say that shit again and I will shoot you and drop you off the pier up there.”
I point out the jutting concrete about a quarter mile ahead of us.
“Aw, you can’t do that shit,” he says with a scraggled grin with uneven and brown teeth.
I look him in the eyes again, and then his grin is gone.
“Okay, I heard of Tommy Costello, but nobody knows where that idiot is. Pete’s people don’t even know, Jimmy.”
“I hear Costello likes the Giants.”
“You mean the baseball team? So?”
“You might hear whether Tommy’s going to make the opener on the fifteenth at Wrigley, and you might let me know as soon as you hear about it.”
“I suppose I can—”