Jimmy Parisi Part Two Box Set

by Thomas Laird

“You suppose, Pauly?”

  “I’ll let you know, Jimmy, if I hear anything like that.”

  “I want to know if you hear Costello’s going to show a hair on his ass anywhere in Cook County, you little skanky jerk. We let you survive with your stolen cigarettes and your heisted moosepiss beer on the streets and the only reason you’re running around free is that you give decent information, once in a while. And if you stop being forthcoming, your stinky ass will reside in Joliet, and you can become queen bitch of the bitches in the shithouse.”

  “Don’t get nuts on me, Jimmy.”

  He begins to shiver.

  “Did you understand everything I said? Or do I need to tell burglary what you’ve been up to?”

  “You don’t want to do none of that.”

  He is, I think, the skinniest white man I’ve ever seen, and he’s the whitest white man right about now.

  I walk him back to Doc and the Ford, and then we drive him back to the alley where we found him.

  But his car’s not there, along with all the booty in his trunk.

  “Jesus,” he moans.

  We leave him to grieve his losses.

  *

  Doc and I have several similar encounters with our other informants on the north and south sides. We’re trying to cast a wider net, but I don’t know if any of our snitches really want to cross Pete Parisi.

  So we spend some time tailing my cousin all over Chicago and the suburbs. We blow three shifts trailing after Pete, and it’s all for naught. There’s no sighting of the bigshot from California, and apparently Tommy is not claustrophobic enough yet to make a grand appearance. I still have to think that the lure of opening day and the ballpark might make him come to the surface.

  The last time we follow my relative in the Outfit, I wave to him as we pass his new Jaguar as he’s about to turn into the Oakbrook estate.

  He shoots me the middle finger as we go by.

  *

  It’s the end of the first week in April, and there have been no reports from any of our street sources. It’s like in the cowboy and Indian flicks—it’s too quiet.

  We check on Steven James from time to time, but he’s still in the flush of non-marital bliss. He’s finishing up at the Academy in a few months, and the wedding’s still on for June. He’s not letting Azrael make him cower inside their apartment, and I’m happy that he’s living his life out in the open. Whatever skeletons that remain in his closet from our lost war, he’s not letting those demons steal his chance with the therapist who helped him survive all that shit.

  I get a few night sweats, too, occasionally. Doc says he has nightmares about bugles and Chinese charges from Korea, also, but he’s tough enough to not let it own him. He has his writing and his dreams of becoming a writer-in-residence at Northwestern when he gets enough significant publications, he tells me.

  Then on the eighth day of this spring month, we get a call from Auto Theft-Burglary that a report has come in about Azrael’s ride, the green Chevy. The call comes from a sleezoid dealer in Orland Park.

  We drive out to the southwestern suburb that still hasn’t escaped the idea of being the boonies, and we meet up with this slick used car salesman who tells us he sold a Ford Fairlane to a guy who fits Azrael’s description perfectly. We look at the paperwork, and the name on the title is Matthew Carson. When we check the address, it’s a bogus one out of Berwyn, Illinois. The address is for an empty lot. So we figure Azrael’s got fine paperwork that’s raising no eyebrows.

  We talk to the Orland Park police, and they help us scour the neighborhoods, but there’s not a single white Ford Fairlane that we can scope. It was a long shot that we’d catch the Ranger with his car out in the open, we both figure, and Doc and I agree that he’s likely boogied out of the vicinity by now. He could be back in the city or in any number of well-populated ‘burbs—minus the ride he bought in cash from this pencil-mustached asshole used car dealer.

  Feeling extremely dejected, we head back to the city, to the Loop, and to the Lake that sits a few blocks from our headquarters.

  *

  We get another call from Auto Theft-Burglary, and this time they say they’ve recovered the white Fairlane—but they’ve found it in Oak Lawn, on the southwest perimeter of the city.

  So the Army operator stays several strides ahead of us again, and I’m not surprised. He’ll need transportation, so we send out information to every used car dealer in Cook County, and to DuPage County as well. He has to find a car if he wants to catch up with Tommy Costello, so he won’t go long without a vehicle.

  *

  We visit our informants constantly. It’s a full court press, and time is short, we both know. Costello will arise like the bloodsucker in Dracula and he’ll give up his monastic life because what’s the point of being a Boss if you can’t live the life that goes with it? His ego will tell him that Azrael’s only one man, and he’ll recollect that he owns an army of well-paid baboons who have guns, too, and he’ll think “why am I letting one lone jackass cower me inside four walls that belong to Pete Parisi when I could be out making more money and dipping into more young stuff?”

  His vanity will bring him outside. It might’ve sounded like a really slick tactic to go underground until the police caught Azrael, but that move didn’t work, obviously. So maybe he’ll hire a platoon of hitmen to look for the ex-Ranger. He can afford to employ the best from anywhere in the world to catch up with one Army operator. He can afford to recruit from the Foreign Legion to the Seals or the Green Berets—name your favorite flavor of bounty hunter.

  I know all this has crossed Tommy Costello’s mind by now. This Azrael thing makes him look weak in front of the young Turks on the West Coast, too. They’ll think he’s vulnerable, and now Tommy has a whole list of Evan Azraels on his ass. The new crew will want to usurp the throne, and it’ll be like sharks and blood in the water.

  So Doc and I figure that Tommy Costello’s great adventure and vacation in the Windy City have about come to a conclusion.

  And we deduce, like Sherlock Holmes, that Azrael, the namesake of the Angel of Death, won’t be leaving our vicinity until his work is through. He has a habit of finishing what he’s started, and my partner and I see no reason why he’d take off from this quest or duty or whatever the hell he thinks he’s obligated to do.

  *

  Rita walks into my office on the ninth of April and says she wants to take me to lunch. It’s almost noon on my days’ shift, and Doc has an appointment with his orthopedic surgeon.

  I walk her to the elevators, and I watch her look in either direction up and down the hall and when she sees no one coming either way, she grabs hold of me and pulls me toward her and kisses me as passionately as I’ve ever been bussed.

  “Got time for a nooner?” She smiles.

  The elevator door swooshes open.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Chicago, 1985

  I don’t go straight back to the apartment in Orland Park when I leave the old man’s in Wisconsin. I head for the southwestern ‘burb of Oak Lawn, and I ditch the Fairlane. It isn’t wise to keep the same ride for too long, and when I buy a car from a dealer, there are eyes on me, and sooner or later someone’s going to call the cops because they’ve recognized me from the photos and drawings in the paper and on TV.

  So I leave the Ford just behind Oak Lawn High School, and I figure any booster is welcome to it. My next ride will be stolen, by me.

  I hitch back to Orland Park by standing on an intersection alongside Southwest Highway. This road runs right into Orland Park, and when I hook a ride, I can get off at 155th and walk over to Diana’s building. It’s better that no one drops me off in front of her place.

  It takes a half hour before some guy in a pickup pulls over and offers me a lift. He’s headed for Indiana, but he’ll be passing through Orland Park on his way to I-80.

  He doesn’t say much on the ride back, but he keeps his eyes on the road, which is even better. There was no recognition
when he let me inside the cab, either.

  I ring the bell for Diana’s apartment even though I’ve got my own keys to the front and to my flat, but I have a kind of urge to see her. I’ve been thinking about her all the way here from Oak Lawn, since I didn’t have to make small talk with the pickup driver. There was something about her face—maybe it was the need, I don’t know. I thought I connected with her somewhere, but I’m not sure how. Diana’s got at least twenty years on me, but I do know this is not some Freudian mommy thing. I simply find her attractive, even sexy. There’s character in her face, and that goes a long way for me, about now, because I haven’t seen that trait on anyone’s face since I saw it on Li’s.

  When she opens her door, her face brightens into a wide smile. I can’t help returning the look back at her. She motions me inside, and I follow her into the living room where she motions for me to sit next to her on her three-piece sectional couch. Then she seats herself right next to me. But I don’t feel as though she’s too close. It feels right, sitting where she is.

  “I thought you’d disappeared,” she says, the smile still beaming on her.

  “I—I just went on a short trip to see an old Army buddy. Up north, in Michigan.”

  I don’t like lying to her, but I can’t have her knowing my previous whereabouts. No matter how I feel right now, I have no reason to trust her. Yet.

  “My car broke down about fifty miles from here. I had to hitch to get home.”

  “You should’ve called me.” She grins.

  “I don’t have your number written down.”

  She puts her right hand on my left thigh.

  I let it lie. It feels good, and I hope she won’t take it back.

  “I was wondering if I could borrow your car until I get a new ride. I think the Ford blew a rod and it isn’t worth fixing. I’ll have to get another car.”

  “You can use mine anytime. Just let me know.”

  The hand is warm. Her grip on my leg is light, but it’s secure. She wants me to feel her.

  Then she moves her fingers higher.

  “That’s really great of you, Diana. You trust me that much already?”

  “I have a feeling about you.”

  Then she bends over and kisses me, and I throw my arms around her, and I want her so intensely that I push her onto her back and I’m on top of her, but she’s not stopping me, and then we’re both all hands, trying to get our clothes off. She is wearing a tee shirt and a bra and shorts—and now I see the black bikini panties when the shorts are stripped off.

  She helps me with the blue jeans and the briefs, and then we’re both naked, and I’m still on top of her.

  “Let me get on top,” she says. Her breathlessness gets me more aroused than I already was, and now it hurts because it’s standing up and facing me like it’s really at attention, and she giggles and takes me into her mouth.

  “Don’t go too soon,” she pleads.

  She gets on top of me as I sit up on the couch. She’s straddled over my middle, and her full breasts make me think I’m going to end it before it should, but she slows down and begins a slow, steady rhythm on top of me. I have her breasts in my hands and I knead the large, hard, erect pink nipples.

  I can only stand it for a little while longer, so she gets off me. When she sees me still standing tall, she slides her hand over me, and then she makes me stand while she lies flat on the couch. She raises her legs and opens them for me, and then there’s no holding back. The wildness takes over both of us, and I finish just before she does.

  But I remain rock hard while she’s pulsing, so I stay inside and thrust against her when she comes up to meet me.

  Finally she’s spent, and I roll over on my side. We’re both lathered up pretty well. Her front windows are opened, but there are sheers over them, and the breeze pushes them gently away from the glass. I’m not worried about anyone seeing us in here even though we’re on the first floor. I’m not concerned about anything right now—not Tommy Costello or the armies of police that are scouring Chicago for me. Not for that Homicide detective, Parisi, whose name has been in the papers the last few days. I’m not thinking about anything but Diana at this precise moment.

  “You think I’m too old for you?”

  “No. No I don’t,” I tell her. And I’m not lying to her this time. I don’t want to bullshit her again, but I know I’ll probably have to, and I figure the future lies will be to protect Diana, not to deceive her.

  “Jesus, look at you,” she smiles.

  It won’t relax and go flaccid. It almost embarrasses me, but I see that she likes its stubbornness.

  “Never waste anything,” she says.

  She lifts her leg over my left side as I face her on the couch, and then she guides me into her. I’m not deep inside, but I’m situated where it gives her full pleasure, and I move back and forth inside her until the foreplay is too unbearable, and so she mounts me astride, once again, and this time the urgency is not as intense as it was the first time, but the casual pace is far superior to the rush we took at getting at each other initially.

  I don’t want it to end. I want to see her on top of me, beneath me, endlessly. I thought I could never feel this way again after Li was murdered, but it happened anyway.

  It would have to be now, I’m thinking, now when my time is short.

  But it doesn’t have to be brief if I can hide out here. They don’t know where I am. The car’s gone. No one knows I’m here in this remote village in the sticks. People have disappeared before. I remember all the stories I’ve heard about MIAs in the war. Every war has had its missing in action, so why can’t I become one of those statistics?

  She lays her breasts on my chest, and I feel the warmth of her lovely perspiring flesh. I feel the edge of her nipples on my chest, too, and I thrust up against her and her mouth opens in a perfect circle, and then she collapses on top of me.

  But I’m still erect. So I pulse up against her gently until she raises her upper half and begins to thrust in sync with me.

  I take her hips and urge her to release us.

  “Let’s go in the shower. You have a shower, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she laughs. “I have all the modern features, Matthew.”

  When she says my ‘name,’ I think I’m in love with her. But I can’t tell her because I know she’ll think it’s a lie. And I’m keeping all those untruths to a minimum.

  We walk into the bathroom, and I see the stall is large enough for both of us. She has a glass enclosure instead of a vinyl curtain. Diana slides the glass open, and we step in one at a time, and then she closes the glass door again and then starts the water, which comes on warm in a moment and the streams cascade down on both of us.

  I lift her up onto my forearms and I pin her against the tiled wall, and then she blurts out a noise that’s just shy of a shriek, and I feel her tightening on me and releasing me and tightening on me again. When she looks at me with a plea on her face, I know she’s had enough, and when I look down after she’s standing exhaustedly before me, I find that my mast has finally been lowered.

  “Thank God,” she says. “I need a nap.”

  But I lather her with soap, and when she reciprocates for me, the hiatus is abruptly ended, and I’m prodding her again.

  So up she goes on my forearms, one more time, and it doesn’t take long for her to join me fully. She seems re-invigorated, and I look in her eyes and see she wants the same thing I do.

  *

  We lay in her queen-sized bed until about five in the evening.

  “Are you hungry?” she asks.

  I motion down to my middle.

  She laughs.

  “We’re never going to emerge from this apartment unless you strap that thing down, Matthew.”

  “I’m sure it’ll behave after it has enough of you. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.”

  She takes me in hand and gets me against her wetness, but I don’t go inside. She’s tired, and I’m ins
atiable, but I have to let her rest.

  I must be in love because I’m thinking about Diana, not about this hard protrusion on me. It’s a unique sentiment. With women—except for one, previously—I only wanted their sex, and then I was content to move on. It was that way as soon as I passed puberty and launched into the teenage years. I had girlfriends in high school, and I was no virgin for very long and neither were the girls I was with. Then I went to college for two years at a junior college on the southwest side, and finally I enlisted in the Army just in time for Vietnam. The women I knew were for one thing only, in my military years, and there weren’t very many of them. I got laid on R and R, but I wasn’t much interested in them. I was a killer. That was my job.

  Until Li. And our life didn’t last long because Willy Costello interrupted it.

  Now, at the least opportune moment possible, I literally run into a much older woman, and all the indicators for me are a lot more terminal than they are for Diana, but it’s not stopping anything.

  Maybe I’m thinking Diana’s a last chance. If I only have days or weeks left before I kill Tommy or he kills me or if the cops do find me here, it seems like I ought to use them all up. They won’t be coming round again for me.

  “Come back inside me.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You won’t, Matthew. I know this isn’t going to last long.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m old enough to be your mother, and I’ve been around the block more than once.”

  “What if I don’t agree on your assessment?”

  “You don’t even know me. Not even a little.”

  “So I’ll have to stick around and find out, then, won’t I?”

  “You’ll change your mind, Matthew.”

  “Wait and see. I’m more stubborn than you suppose.”

  “If your cock is any indication, then maybe you are.” She laughs.

  I position her on her back and I elevate her legs and I burrow my way as far as I can into her, and her head goes back and she comes out with something more lupine than feminine. It’s a gentle howl, but there it is.